The Romic Alphabet, sometimes known as the Romic Reform, is a phonetic alphabet proposed by Henry Sweet. It is the direct ancestor of the modern International Phonetic Alphabet. The alphabet differs from previously proposed spelling reforms by favoring a return to the sound values of the Roman (and consequently Old English) alphabet instead of retaining irregular elements of modern English. Every sound had a dedicated symbol, and every symbol rep...
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The Romic Alphabet, sometimes known as the Romic Reform, is a phonetic alphabet proposed by Henry Sweet. It is the direct ancestor of the modern International Phonetic Alphabet. The alphabet differs from previously proposed spelling reforms by favoring a return to the sound values of the Roman (and consequently Old English) alphabet instead of retaining irregular elements of modern English. Every sound had a dedicated symbol, and every symbol represented a single sound. There were no capital letters.
The vowels had their English "short" sounds when written singly, and their "long" sounds when doubled:
Sweet proposed creating new letters by rotating existing letters, and in this way no new type would need to be cast:
The IPA letter acquired its modern pronunciation and first use with this alphabet. He resurrected two Anglo-Saxon letters, ash and eth , and borrowed the Greek letter theta , which had the pronunciations they retain in the IPA. He used for /ŋ/ and for /tʃ/.
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