English spelling is a beautiful, chaotic mess. Why is “tough” spelled like “bough” but sounds nothing like “through”? How did “colonel” get a phantom ‘r’ sound, and why do we have “eight” different ways to pronounce the letters “ough”? These are the kinds of questions that have driven linguists, reformers, and frustrated schoolchildren to despair for centuries.

Most of us just sigh and accept it. But one of the 20th century’s most brilliant minds refused. George Bernard Shaw—the celebrated playwright behind works like Pygmalion and Man and Superman—was utterly obsessed with the illogical nature of English orthography. He saw it not as a charming quirk, but as a colossal waste of time, money, and cognitive energy. And he decided to use his considerable fame and fortune to do something about it.

This is the story of the Shavian alphabet, a grand experiment in linguistic engineering that was logical, elegant, and almost completely ignored.

A Will with a Vision

Shaw was a passionate advocate for spelling reform throughout his life. He argued that the conventional Latin alphabet was hopelessly inadequate for representing the sounds of English. In his view, a new alphabet, one where each letter corresponded to a single, distinct sound (a phonemic system), could save years of education time and millions of pounds in printing costs.

He put his money where his mouth was. Upon his death in 1950, Shaw’s will revealed a peculiar and ambitious provision. A significant portion of his estate was to be put into a trust to fund the creation and promotion of a new “Proposed English Alphabet”. This alphabet had to meet two strict criteria:

1. It must contain at least 40 letters, enough to represent every distinct sound in English without ambiguity.
2. It must be completely phonemic, meaning one symbol would always represent one sound.

After a legal battle over the validity of the trust, a global competition was held to design this new alphabet. The winner, chosen from over 450 entries, was Kingsley Read, an English designer and lettering artist. His system, refined and finalized, was named “Shavian” in honor of its benefactor.

Meet the Shavian Alphabet

Unveiled in 1962, the Shavian alphabet (or 𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯, as it would be written) is a visually striking and intelligently designed system. It consists of 40 core letters, plus several ligatures for common letter combinations. The letters are cleverly designed to be easy to write by hand and distinct from one another.

Read organized the letters into three groups based on their shape:

• Tall Letters: These are letters that extend upwards, like ‘b’ or ‘d’ in the Latin alphabet. In Shavian, these (e.g., 𐑐, 𐑚, 𐑑, 𐑛) mostly represent voiceless consonants like ‘p’, ‘t’, ‘k’ and their voiced counterparts ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘g’.
• Deep Letters: These extend downwards, like ‘p’ or ‘q’. These (e.g., 𐑓, 𐑝, 𐑔, 𐑞) represent other pairs of consonants, such as ‘f’ and ‘v’.
• Short Letters: These sit on the baseline, like ‘a’ or ‘c’. These letters (e.g., 𐑨, 𐑧, 𐑦, 𐑩) primarily represent vowels and liquids like ‘l’ and ‘r’.

The beauty of the system is its internal logic. Often, a simple rotation or flip of a letter signifies a related sound. For example, the letter for “p” (𐑐) is a flipped version of the letter for “b” (𐑚). This design makes the alphabet easier to learn than it might first appear.

To see it in action, here is the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

English: “All human beings are born free and equal”.

Shavian: “𐑷𐑤 𐑣𐑿𐑥𐑩𐑯 𐑚𐑰𐑦𐑙𐑟 𐑸 𐑚𐑷𐑯 𐑓𐑮𐑰 𐑯 𐑰𐑒𐑢𐑩𐑤”.

(Note: Your ability to see the Shavian characters depends on your device’s font support.)

Notice how “beings” becomes 𐑚𐑰𐑦𐑙𐑟 and “equal” becomes 𐑰𐑒𐑢𐑩𐑤. The spelling perfectly matches the pronunciation, eliminating guesswork entirely.

The Grand Experiment and the Inevitable Flop

As per Shaw’s will, a special bi-alphabetic edition of his play, Androcles and the Lion, was published. The book presented the text in both the traditional Latin alphabet and the new Shavian script on facing pages. It was meant to be the system’s grand debut, a demonstration of its elegance and utility.

And then… nothing. The book was a curiosity, but the alphabet failed to catch on. A few dedicated enthusiasts adopted it, but the wider public remained indifferent. The grand linguistic experiment was, by almost every measure, a failure. But why?

Why Rational Design Isn’t Enough

The failure of the Shavian alphabet offers a powerful lesson in linguistics and culture: language is not an engine that can be swapped out for a more efficient model. It’s a living, breathing ecosystem, bound by immense forces of history and habit.

Here are the key reasons Shavian never stood a chance:

1. Cultural Inertia: The Latin alphabet is everywhere. It’s on our keyboards, our street signs, our legal documents, and in every library. The cost and effort required to replace this infrastructure would be astronomical. More importantly, people are deeply invested in the system they already know. An adult who has spent decades mastering the quirks of English spelling has little incentive to learn an entirely new system from scratch.
2. The “Which English”? Problem: A purely phonetic alphabet has a hidden flaw: whose phonetics? Shavian was largely based on British Received Pronunciation (RP). An American, a Scot, or an Australian would need to spell words differently to match their accent. Does “dance” get spelled with the vowel from “cat” (US) or “father” (UK)? This immediately fragments the written language, defeating the purpose of a universal standard.
3. The Loss of Etymology: For all its flaws, English spelling contains a hidden history. The silent ‘b’ in “debt” points to its Latin root, debitum. The “ph” in “philosophy” signals its Greek origin. A phonetic alphabet erases these historical and morphological links, making the language visually poorer for those who appreciate its roots.
4. The Homophone Dilemma: English is rife with homophones—words that sound the same but have different meanings. We distinguish “there”, “their”, and “they’re” by spelling. In a phonetic system, they would all be written identically, forcing readers to rely entirely on context and potentially introducing ambiguity.

The Lingering Ghost of a Failed Alphabet

Today, the Shavian alphabet exists as a historical footnote, kept alive by a small but dedicated community of hobbyists online. It was officially added to the Unicode standard in 2003, ensuring its digital preservation. It stands not as a failure of design—for it is a brilliant design—but as a testament to the power of tradition.

George Bernard Shaw’s dream of a rational English was a noble one. But he underestimated the human element. We don’t cling to our messy spelling out of foolishness, but because it is ours. It is a product of a thousand years of history, invasion, and cultural exchange. Changing an alphabet isn’t like upgrading software; it’s like trying to reroute a river that has been carving its path for millennia. The Shavian alphabet proved that even the most logical solution can’t always tame the beautiful, stubborn chaos of human language.