An Easy Symbolic System for Phonemes Which is Keyboard Compatible

Abstract

A keyboard compatible phonemic system is described. It uses those graphemes in traditional orthography which normally represent particular phonemes. This system has a certain degree of regularity, it can normally be stored compactly without the need for separators and, because it is grapheme-based, it can use the same symbols to represent speakers from different countries. The system's regularity is achieved by using the same grapheme which represents similar sounds in its lower and upper case forms (e.g., thick and this are represented as /thik/ and /THis/, respectively). Similarly, all short forms of vowels are in lower case and all long forms are in upper case. It is argued that most psychologists currently using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) do so in a highly restricted manner to represent the pronunciation of words (analogous to the representation of word sounds in dictionaries) rather than as a precise phonetic representation of sounds which is available in the fuller form of the IPA. When making such dictionary-based representations of phonemes, there is no advantage in using the restricted form of the IPA given the advantages of the proposed keyboard compatible system which is easy to learn, less susceptible to error by more experienced users, and can be easily stored on computer.