The Alphabet

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When we talk about "the English alphabet", for example, we mean the set of letters needed to write English, in a particular order, with a spelling name for each one: "Ay Bee See ...". The ICAO alphabet has different names for those same letters: "Alfa Bravo Charlie ...".

The Shwa alphabet works a little differently. First of all, there's no definitive list of all possible letters: each language just uses the letters it needs. However, there is a definitive list of shapes, and the two shapes that combine to form a letter - one on top and one on the bottom - are the basis both for alphabetical order and for the letter names :

Shape	Name		Alone	As Top	As Bottom
		chī	space	low vowel	high vowel
		djō	punctuation	low rising tone	high rising tone
		rē		low level tone	high level tone
		zhū		low falling tone	high falling tone
		shā	long	glottal, semivowel or suffix	coronal
		kō	i	murmured nasal or rhotic	palatal
		gē	e	ejective plosive	labial
		lū		aspirated plosive	bilabial
		yā	ae	unvoiced plosive
		wī	nasal	nasal	prenasal
		tē	ih	click	yh
		dū	eh	implosive	uvular
		nā		voiced plosive	dorsal
		zī	a	breathy plosive
		sō	er	rhotic	retroflex
		pū	u	voiced lateral	w
		bā	o	ejective fricative	hissing sibilant
		mī	oe	voiced fricative	hushing sibilant
		vō	ah	unvoiced fricative	radical
		fē	ue	unvoiced lateral	yw

The name of each shape is a nonsense syllable, like Alfa. The name of a letter is then just the name of the top followed by the name of the bottom, with the stress on the second syllable. So for example, the word Shwa would be spelled out loud as "vōmī shāpū zīchī".

The last three columns - what each shape means in each position - is the real "alphabet" : what you have to learn to read and write Shwa.

Alphabetic Order

The alphabet also sorts in the same order, with some adjustments :

• Vowels sort as if they had no accents; however, accents are then used as a secondary sort, in this order:
  high vowel - high rising - high level - high falling - low vowel - low rising - low level - low falling
• Punctuation sorts in the same order : space - rising - level - falling, with high sorting first

To illustrate, consider the following list, which is in alphabetic order:

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