Ewellic: U+E680 - U+E6CF
The Ewellic script (pronounced yoo-WELL-ik) was invented by Doug Ewell in 1980. It is a monocase, phonemic script, designed primarily to represent the general pronunciation of English and other languages without implying the phonetic precision of systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
It is proposed that the Ewellic script be registered in the ConScript Unicode Registry (CSUR). A block from U+E680 through U+E6CF (5 columns) is proposed and referenced throughout this document.
General informationEwellic was originally invented as a form of secret writing, but has also been used as a means of transcribing names and certain English words with particularly non-intuitive spellings. The script was originally intended for writing English, with additional letters to provide tentative support for Spanish. A group of 13 new letters was added in 2007, so that Ewellic can now be used to write French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Esperanto as well as English.
As a phonemic, rather than phonetic, script, Ewellic is intended to indicate the approximate, rather than precise, pronunciation of words. For example, there is no attempt to distinguish between the "pure" O of Italian and the diphthongal O of British English, or between the various R sounds of English, French, Spanish, and German. Spelling represents a general, idealized pronunciation of each word as it is understood by the writer; only phonemically relevant distinctions are represented by distinct letters.
Since spelling is based on pronunciation, words such as tomato and aunt that have alternative pronunciations will have more than one possible spelling. This is a characteristic of the alphabet, and does not imply an attempt to standardize pronunciation or accents.
GlyphsThe shapes of Ewellic letters are influenced by the Runic and Cirth alphabets, but Ewellic is relatively systematic and regular. All consonants (and digits) have a single vertical stroke; all vowels have two vertical strokes. Consonants include only slanted (oblique) half- or full-width horizontal strokes, whereas digits include one or two straight (perpendicular) full-width horizontal strokes.
Letters may not be rotated, reflected, or otherwise transformed, except that ligatures may be formed by connecting horizontal strokes at natural connection points, as described below. Glyph variation that does not alter or obscure the identity of the letter is normal and expected.
Consonants and vowelsMost consonant sounds are relatively straightforward. Note the following in particular:
These letters do not necessarily reflect all phonetic variations present in all dialects or accents. For example, U+E6B0 LETTER AA may be used to represent both the a sound in father and the o sound in cot, which are pronounced differently in British English.
Vowel length is not shown as part of Ewellic spelling. The difference in pronunciation between German words such as Bann and Bahn can be shown by the contrastive use of U+E6AF LETTER AE and U+E6B0 LETTER AA. Most other distinctions in vowel length can be resolved from context.
The "schwa" character, used frequently in some dictionary pronunciation guides to denote the 'u' sound in English up, should be used in Ewellic only for truly "empty" vowels such as the table example above, where another vowel would be clearly incorrect. As a special case, the schwa is also used for unstressed a, an, and the in English. The schwa is never used for any stressed syllable.
A special set of nasal vowels exists to support French usage, as shown below:
Note that the character names for Ewellic letters do not necessarily reflect the spellings typically associated with those sounds in English or other languages. The English sound sometimes referred to as "long I" (as in ice) is a diphthong, represented in Ewellic by the combination U+E6B0 LETTER AA + U+E698 LETTER Y. Character names are intended for identification only.
Accents and ligaturesEvery word of two or more syllables must include an accent mark (U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT) over the vowel of the syllable that receives the primary stress. Words generally should not contain more than one accent mark. For ISO/IEC 10646 usage, the use of U+0301 implies Level 3 encoding. In French, where stress does not alter the meaning of words, accent marks may be limited to the stressed syllable within a phrase, or omitted altogether.
Letters may be joined, or ligated, wherever a natural connection point occurs between cross-strokes. Two traditional ligatures are OY (U+E6B8 + U+E698), representing the diphthongal sound in English boy, and UR (U+E6BA + U+E692), representing the sound in English fur (in rhotic dialects). Other possibilities include U+E6B8 and U+E690, pronounced as in English ought. Ligatures may be suggested by inserting U+200D ZERO-WIDTH JOINER between the two letters. Not all fonts and rendering engines support such ligatures, especially in the Private Use Area.
No accented characters, ligatures, or other "presentation forms" are included in the CSUR encoding.
DigitsThe digits from U+E6C0 through U+E6C9 may be used to represent either decimal or hexadecimal values. Additional digits encoded from U+E6CA through U+E6CF represent the values 10 through 15 respectively and are for use in hexadecimal contexts only. The character U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT must precede any string of digits intended to be interpreted as hexadecimal.
European digits (U+0030 through U+0039) may be used in place of the Ewellic digits to represent decimal values.
MiscellaneousEwellic is written from left to right, top to bottom, with spaces between words.
No "double letters" should occur in Ewellic except to denote a lengthened (geminated) consonant sound, as described above, or for two clearly distinct vowel sounds.
Words should not be broken across lines.
The preferred double quotation marks are U+00AB « and U+00BB » ; the preferred single quotation marks are U+2039 ‹ and U+203A › . Most other punctuation marks are found in the Basic Latin range of Unicode. Inverted exclamation points and question marks are not used.
The order in which characters are encoded in this block is not intended to represent a collation order.
Encoding structureThe Ewellic block is divided into the following ranges, some of which include unassigned code positions:
U+E680 -> U+E68E Nasal vowels U+E68F -> U+E6AE Consonants U+E6AF -> U+E6BF Vowels U+E6C0 -> U+E6C9 Digits U+E6CA -> U+E6CF Hexadecimal digits