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Spanish

Alphabet gait

Arabic

Abjad gait

Japanese

Syllabary gait

Chinese

Character gait

Shwa Script is a constructed writing system invented by Peter Cyrus. It is intended to be pan-linguistic[1] and be usable in real life. It is a phonetic (not phonemic) script[2], meaning that anyone who knows Shwa sufficiently well can read any word from any language. This also allows it to be truly featural.

Another interesting feature is its collection of gaits[3]. The simplest is alphabet gate, where words are rendered linearly as a series of monospace letters. This is used for languages with complex syllable structures, where other gaits cannot be used. Abjad gate is used for consonant-based languages, mainly Afro-Asiatic languages. Words are written as joined-up consonants, with vowels above and below the consonants. Syllabary gait is used for languages predominantly made up of CV syllables, including Japanese and Indic languages. Vowels are written connecting to the previous consonant. Finally, there is the character gait. This is used for languages featuring coda consonants in a simple syllable structure. Many of these languages are from east Asia, including Korean, whose current writing system can be compared to character gait Shwa.

Samples[]

Along the side is a selection of language endonyms, as written in the current script (black) and in Shwa (blue). They come from shwa.org's homepage.

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