The Shavian alphabet (𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯) is a phonemic writing system designed for English by Kingsley Read, commissioned by the will of George Bernard Shaw. Each letter represents exactly one sound — no silent letters, no ambiguous spellings.
Type or paste English text below. Click individual Shavian letters to swap phonemes. Click a Latin word to cycle through markers: namer dot · (proper noun), acroring ⸰ (initialism), acroarc ꤮ (pronounceable acronym).
Convert English to the Shavian alphabet
The transliterator converts English text into the Shavian alphabet by looking up phonemes for each word and pairing them with their corresponding Shavian letters. The output is a three-row gloss showing the original Latin word, the Shavian spelling, and the IPA pronunciation it is based on.
1. Enter text and read the gloss
- Input area. Paste or type English. Punctuation and spacing are preserved exactly. The gloss redraws as you type.
- Status bar. Shows whether the small core dictionary or the full dictionary is active. Heuristic guesses are coloured to help you spot words that need review.
- IPA row. Green IPA is from a dictionary entry, red IPA is a heuristic guess that you may want to correct.
2. Adjust phonemes and markers
- Click a Shavian letter. Opens a popover with alternative letters that map to similar sounds. Pick one to swap that single phoneme; the IPA and Shavian rows update together.
- Click a Latin word. Cycles through three markers - namer dot for proper nouns, acroring for initialisms, acroarc for pronounceable acronyms - and back to no marker.
- Edits are local. Once you swap a phoneme the word becomes user-edited and the dictionary will not overwrite it on the next keystroke.
3. Export
- Copy Shavian. Copies just the Shavian text with original punctuation and spacing, ready to paste into a document or chat.
- Export Gloss. Renders the three-row gloss to a PNG canvas in either light or dark theme so you can share the breakdown as an image.
Where do the Shavian spellings come from?
A small core dictionary loads instantly with the page, then a larger curated dictionary streams in the background. Each entry maps an English word to its phonemes; the tool combines those phonemes with the official Shavian phoneme map.
What happens to a word that is not in the dictionary?
The tool falls back to a heuristic that guesses phonemes from English spelling. Heuristic words are flagged with a red IPA color so you can spot them and adjust individual letters from the popover.
What do the markers mean?
Click a Latin word to cycle through the namer dot for proper nouns, the acroring for initialisms read letter by letter, and the acroarc for pronounceable acronyms. Click again to remove the marker.
Is anything sent to a server when I transliterate?
No. The dictionaries and the rendering for Copy Shavian and Export Gloss all run in your browser, including the PNG canvas export. The font ships locally and is loaded with font-display: swap.