Avestan for English 
Avestan for English is an alternative way to write English with the Avestan script invented by David Bailey. He devised the system after noting the similarities between the Avestan language and English, particularly the rich consonant and vowel inventory, which lends itself well to representing the many varieties of spoken English.
Notable features
- Type of writing system: phonemic alphabet
- Direction of writing: right to left in horizontal lines
- Used to write: most varieties of English, including General American, Received Pronunciation, Australian English, Canadian English
- Some letters have variant forms and there is a large inventory of ligatures
Avestan for English
Notes
- Many vowels of the Avestan language do not exactly mirror those of English, especially when taking multiple dialects into account. Therefore, a few tweaks were necessary to better accommodate the sounds of English. Generally speaking, Avestan's short-length vowels ([a, ɑ, ə, e, i, u]) were used to represent English short vowels (/æ, ɒ, ə, ɛ, ɪ, ʊ/, respectively), while Avestan's long vowels ([aː, ɑː, eː, oː, iː, uː]) represent English long vowels (/äː, ɑː, eɪ, oː, iː, uː/, respectively). The exceptions to this are Avestan vowels [əː, o] used for English /ʌ, ɔː/.
- The consonants /n, m, l/ can be used to represent word-final syllabic /ən~n̩, əm~m̩, əl~l̩/
- Aside from representing the English rhotic consonant, Avestan letter r is also used to form rhotic vowel diphthongs (e.g., /ɚ/, /ɑ˞/, /ɔ˞/)
- Regarding the special letters: the letters for /æn~ɑn/ and /ən~ʌn/ are taken from Avestan nasal vowels an and aen; the letter representing /in~im/ is taken from Avestan letter ṇ, originally a prenasal consonant. The special letters are optional and can be used to represent English nasal prefixes (an-, on-, in-, etc.)
- The full stop sign is partly an invention for English use; in Avestan it represented paragraph demarcation
Sample text
Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Information about Avestan
Avestan fonts
The font used in the charts above is Avestan2 © Ian James, which can be purchased for A$5.00
http://skyknowledge.com/new-avestan.htm
The Google Noto project has a freeware Unicode Avestan font
https://www.google.com/get/noto/#sans-avst
Constructed scripts for: Ainu |
Arabic |
Chinese languages |
Dutch |
English |
Hawaiian |
Hungarian |
Japanese |
Korean |
Lingala |
Malay & Indonesian |
Persian |
Tagalog / Filipino |
Russian |
Sanskrit |
Spanish |
Taino |
Turkish |
Vietnamese |
Welsh |
Other natural languages |
Colour-based scripts |
Tactile scripts |
Phonetic/universal scripts |
Constructed scripts for constructed languages |
Adaptations of existing alphabets |
Fictional alphabets |
Magical alphabets |
A-Z index |
How to submit a constructed script
[top]
You can support this site by Buying Me A Coffee, and if you like what you see on this page, you can use the buttons below to share it with people you know.
If you like this site and find it useful, you can support it by making a donation via PayPal or Patreon, or by contributing in other ways. Omniglot is how I make my living.
Note: all links on this site to Amazon.com
, Amazon.co.uk
and Amazon.fr
are affiliate links. This means I earn a commission if you click on any of them and buy something. So by clicking on these links you can help to support this site.
[top]
