User:Timpo/SaypU

The original of this article was marked as possibly not notable - this is a snapshot at 2013 Feb 27

SaypU (Spell As You Pronounce Universally) project or Spel az Yuu Prenɘawns Yuunivɘɘrsɘl Projekt is an approximative phonetic alphabet of 23 Roman alphabet letters  (the "c" "q"" and "x" are not used) but an IPA letter "ɘ" (shwa) is added which represents the initial sound of "ago" or "about".

This script is intended to be a quick and convenient script for verbally penetrating foreign situations and pronouncing unusual place-names reasonably quickly and accurately. It is not intended to replace but to compliment the highly sophisticated and elegant International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) which is used in professional dictionaries (SaypU currently borrows the "ɘ" directly from the IPA but possibly this may be replaced by a * or @ for less sophisticated machines)

Origin
The Times Education Editor (Greg Hurst) reported :
 * Quotation:
 * It was on an aircraft, late at night, that a former investment banker had the idea that he thinks could change the world.
 * Staring at safety instructions in English and Portuguese, Jaber Jabbour asked himself why two European languages using the Latin alphabet could sound so different.
 * Then it came to Mr Jabbour, whose native tongue is Arabic: why not devise an alphabet that allows words to be spelt out exactly as they sound? Not just in English but any language. The next morning he began doing just that.

The project was launched on 13 December 2012 by Jaber George Jabbour, Director of the Logos Capital Ltd.(UK), who is of Syrian origin, widely travelled and has encountered difficulty pronouncing words spelt in conventional Roman text such as Leicester Square which becomes, in SaypU: Lestɘr skwer.

Its declared purpose is to make pronunciation easier and foster international understanding.

According to BBC Learning English project report by Karen Zarindast
 * Quotation
 * School children in English-speaking countries have difficulty spelling words such as 'people' and 'friend'. They contain the odd vowels which are not pronounced. SAYPU suggests it is about time we started spelling what we pronounced and not just in English, but in all languages. Say, for instance, the word 'oui' - or 'yes' in French - would be spelled WEE¹ and the word LOITE² in German - meaning 'people' - as Lowt¹. The director of Logos Capital, Jaber Jabbour, who is launching the programme today, insists their aim is to help raise worldwide literacy levels by making spelling easier.


 * NoteS The original BBC text was based on early work. The symbols Wii¹ and Lowt² above are phonetically closer.