Romic alphabet

Tables

The following tables outline consonants and vowels as laid out in A Primer of Phonetics (1892: 38).

Consonants

were eventually replaced with in the IPA. Apart from Sweet's use of italic ℎ for voicelessness, the rest of the alphabet continues intact in the modern IPA.

Vowels

In "wide" vowels, the tongue is described as relaxed and flattened; in "narrow", it is tense and more convex. This corresponds to descriptions of vowels as lax and tense. Lax vowels are indicated by italic type. In the case of the mid back unrounded vowel , the description of its place of articulation does not accord well with some of the words given as examples. Sweet described vowels as narrowed with the tongue raised as in high vowels, but the jaw open as in low vowels. This conflicts with the presentation of the IPA, in which high and close are synonymous, as are low and open. Other than the back unrounded vowels and the value of for IPA (but also for English bird, in broad notation), Sweet's notation is essentially that of the IPA.

Italic a takes its traditional shape, which would later be made distinct in the IPA. That is, italic a was , and italic ɐ, . Long vowels are written double. Nasal vowels with an italic nasal consonant letter, such as or (for French) .

These are defined by Sweet as: :: French si, : German See, Scots say, : Swedish lära :: French lune, : French peu, : Swedish för :: Welsh un, : German Gabe, : English ''s'''ir''''' :: Norwegian hus, ... :: Gaelic laogh, : English but, : Cockney park :: French sou, Scots book, : German so, : English ''l'''aw'''''

The lax vowels are defined by Sweet as: :: English bit, : English men, : English man :: French peur, : (German götter is overrounded œ) :: English pretty, : start of English eye, better, : start of English how, Portuguese cama :: English *value''''', : French ho'''mme :: English father, : Swedish mat :: English put, : German stock, English boy, : English not

History

The 1877 version of the Romic alphabet differed rather substantially from the 1892 version. It was very similar to Ellis's Paleotype.

Vowels

Central vowels were indicated with a non-italic 'h' rather than a diaeresis, with regular for later irregular .

The unrounded back vowels were irregular in their composition, in that laxness was not indicated by italicizing, which was used instead for the low vowels. They were (tense) high , mid (English but), low and (lax) high , mid (English father) and low (Scots father).

was used for the unstressed English schwa. It was not listed in the vowel chart because it was not considered to have any particular articulation, being merely an independent element of voicing (what Sweet called a 'glide vowel'), and the voiced equivalent of unarticulated (which would later become ). is an open glottis, (or ) a whispery glottis.

Nasal vowels were indicated with a following italic 𝑛, the French "guttural" nasals with a following italic 𝑞, as in and .

Vowel length was indicated with a following rather than doubling, as in (or extra-long ).

Reduced or barely pronounced sounds were marked by brackets, so .

Indices were used to avoid complex detail when it would be understood, as for English diphthongal

Consonants

Glottal stop was x, the velar nasal q. Digraphs were used where later Sweet would use distinct characters.

and (IPA [h] and [ə]) might both be considered vowels, without any particular place of articulation, though at least [h] can sometimes behave as a glottal consonant.

English ch and j sounds were written and . was specifically an English .

Modifications of consonants

Consonants took diacritics for fronting, as in dental , or retraction, as in uvular , retroflection, as in , and protrusion, as in interdental .

Where the IPA uses superscript letters for secondary articulation, Sweet used italics. Labialization and palatalization were indicated by a following italic and . An italic was used for trills, e.g. Italian (and voiceless Welsh ), German , bilabial , and epiglottal and as in Arabic ain and heth.

Aspiration was marked with . (This was not italicized, but would be later when replaced with ℎ.) Whispered sounds were marked e.g. .

Simultaneous articulation was marked with *, as in .

As with vowels, barely articulated or pronounced consonants were set off with [brackets].

Much of the notation for phonetic detail may have carried over into later versions.

Stress and pitch

Stress is indicated with a placed after the onset of the syllable, as in 'try' ( 'a try' vs 'at Rye'). Extra stress was marked with doubled , half stress with . Increasing, level, and decreasing stress (illustrated with the letter 'a') were , , respectively.

Tone and intonation were indicated with iconic symbols such as rising , falling , level , rising-falling , etc., as in early IPA usage.

Notes

Bibliography

• Sweet, Henry. (1892) A Primer of Phonetics, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (archive.org)
• Sweet, Henry. (1877) A Handbook of Phonetics, Including a Popular Exposition of the Principles of Spelling Reform, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (archive.org)

References

1. {{angbr IPA. ꞁ was principally used for dark (velarized) {{IPA. [ɫ], which Sweet analyzed as a velar sound.
2. This is indeed a high back unrounded vowel {{IPA. [ɯː] in Scottish Gaelic.
3. In broad transcription, Sweet used {{IPA. {{anglebracket. a for French {{lang. fr. p'''a'''tte and Northern German {{lang. de. m'''a'''nn and, as long {{IPA. {{anglebracket. aa, for English ''f'''a'''ther'' and German {{lang. de. n'''a'''me, while he used {{IPA. {{anglebracket. ɐ for English ''c'''o'''me'', which has the same vowel as ''but'' (see next symbol) – essentially the same as the usage of these letters in the IPA. However, these transcriptions may be remnants of his earlier sound values for these letters – see [[#History]].
4. Although specifically palatal in the explanation of symbols in the table. Although {{angbr IPA. ᴛ and {{angbr IPA. ᴅ are elsewhere defined as palatalized {{angbr IPA. t''j'' and {{angbr IPA. d''j'', contrasting with {{angbr IPA. ᴋ and {{angbr IPA. ɢ for palatalized {{angbr IPA. k''j'' and {{angbr IPA. g''j'', here Sweet notes that palatal {{angbr IPA. ᴛ and {{angbr IPA. ᴅ are merely likely to be confounded with the palatalized sounds.
5. Though the dental fricative was simply {{angbr IPA. th, without a diacritic.