įranklin does not make a distinction between the modern / uː/ and / ʊ/ phonemes (in words like goose versus foot), which likely reveals another difference between 18th-century English pronunciation versus modern pronunciation.įranklin's proposed alphabet included nineteen letters to represent consonants. This discrepancy may reflect Franklin's own inconsistencies, but, even more likely, it reflects legitimate differences in the English phonology of his particular time and place. Franklin's long-short vowel distinctions appear not perfectly identical to the same distinctions in 21st-century English for example, the only word shown to use is the word all, but not other words that in modern notation would use /ɔː/. Sometimes Franklin's correspondences written in the new alphabet represent a long vowel not using a double letter but instead using a letter with a circumflex, ◌̂, as when he represents the /eɪ/ sound in "great" and "compared" with ê instead of ee. Likewise, ii is used to represent the /iː/ sound in "degrees", "pleased", and "serene". In this system, ee is used to represent the /eɪ/ sound in "late" and "pale". In his examples of writing in the proposed alphabet, Franklin contrasts long and short uses of his letter e, with the words "mend" and "remain" which, respectively, he spelled mend and remeen. įranklin proposed the use of doubled letters to represent what he called long vowels, represented by modern phonemes in IPA thus: long / ɔː/ versus short / ɒ/ (or, in his notation, versus ), long / eɪ/ versus short / ɛ/ ( ee versus e), and long / iː/ for short / ɪ/ ( ii versus i). The second new vowel letter, ɥ, was used to represent or. The first new letter was formed as a ligature of the letters o and α – – and used to represent a sound that is roughly as transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This set consisted of two new letters, in addition to five letters from the existing English alphabet: α, e, i, o, u. In short I believe we must let people spell on in their old way, and (as we find it easiest) do the same ourselves." Vowels įranklin's proposed alphabet included seven letters to represent vowels. All our etymologies would be lost, consequently we could not ascertain the meaning of many words the distinction, too, between words of different meaning and similar sound would be useless, unless we living writers publish new editions. Dear Sir, I have transcribed your alphabet, etc., which I think might be of service to those, who wish to acquire an accurate pronunciation, if that could be fixed but I see many inconveniences, as well as difficulties, that would attend the bringing your letters and orthography into common use. The text reads: "Kensington, 26 September, 1768. Sample text in Franklin's phonetic alphabet from a letter to Franklin. ʃ/: the phonemes immediately above provide the sounds in IPA of the extra symbols (above them) which Franklin devised for his phonetic alphabet. What today is considered a schwa is mostly represented with ɥ, although whenever spelled in standard English with a, Franklin maintains the symbol α.
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