Shavian alphabet Shavian alphabet The Shavian alphabet (also known as the Shaw alphabet) is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional spelling. It was posthumously funded by and named after Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Shaw set three main criteria for the new alphabet: it should be (1) at least 40 letters; (2) as "phonetic" as possible (that is, letters should have a to phonemes); and (3) distinct from the Latin alphabet to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply "misspellings". The Shavian alphabet consists of
Peter Barnes (playwright) Peter Barnes (playwright) Peter Barnes (10 January 1931 – 1 July 2004) was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His most famous work is the play "The Ruling Class", which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination. Barnes was educated at Marling School in Stroud, Gloucestershire and performed his national service with the Royal Air Force. He then worked briefly for London County Council. Bored with his job, Barnes took a correspondence course in theology and began to visit the British Museum reading room, which he used as an office on a