The Basic Roman system serves no particular standard of English pronunciation. Instead, it gives one way to spell the different varieties of English. The system uses 22 Roman letters to represent the set of English phonemes considered by J.C. Wells. The letters ‘j’, ‘q’, ‘w’ and ‘x’ are not used (letters ‘j’ and ‘w’ are used in an extended version of the Basic Roman spelling, see below).
By way of illustration, the following reference text by V. Yule is given in traditional spelling and in Basic Roman (shown is the non-rhotic version; in the rhotic one, relevant words like ‘daughter’, ‘heart’, ‘pictures’ etc. are spelled ‘dootar’, ‘haart’, ‘pikcharz’ etc.):
A more elaborate version of the system is the Extended Basic Roman spelling of English, which uses also the letters ‘j’ and ‘w’, and has two specific two-letter combinations for the English voiced and voiceless dental fricatives. The above sample text would appear in Extended Basic Roman (non-rhotic version) as follows:
Apart from respelling of English, the Basic Roman could also be used as the target spelling of a universal algorithm for the designing of superior, user-friendly Romanization systems transliterating and transcribing a variety of languages. This ‘streamlined approach’ has been successfully tested in the case of Bulgarian language, with the 1995 Streamlined System for the Romanization of Bulgarian becoming established in Bulgaria (eventually codified in a 2009 law), and adopted also by UN in 2012, and for official US and UK use by BGN and PCGN in 2013. Recently this approach has been used to design the 2017 Streamlined System for the Romanization of Russian aimed at replacing the plethora of systems currently occurring in the non-academic practice of transliteration of Russian Cyrillic.
The Extended Basic Roman is close to one-to-one phoneme-grapheme correspondence, paving the way to a pronunciation respelling for English by means of the closely related Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English.
The Roman Phonetic Alphabet for English is a system based on the Extended Basic Roman spelling of English. It includes two pairs of stress marks which disambiguate words which share the same spelling but have different meanings. This is to get a one-to-one phoneme (sound)–grapheme (spelling) correspondence. The system has certain similarities to the systems of the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation, the Carnegie Mellon version of Arpabet alphabet, and the World Book Dictionary.
Primary stress is indicated by the mark <’>, respectively <”> in the case of \\ and \\. Secondary stress is shown by <,> and <„> respectively. Stress marks are placed before the syllables concerned.
By way of illustration, the following reference text by V. Yule is given in traditional English spelling and in Roman Phonetic Alphabet transcription (non-rhotic version):
Wadjet
Wadjet is a goddess in Egyptian mythology. She was often shown in art as a cobra and was the protector of lower Egypt. Later, she became the protector of kings. Her worship was already established by the Predynastic Period, but did change somewhat as time progressed. She began as the local goddess of Per-Wadjet (Buto) but soon became a patron goddess of Lower Egypt.
Buto
Buto or Butos or Butosos, was the later, Greek name for an ancient Egyptian city 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta of Egypt. It is the modern "Kem Kasir".
Buto originally was two cities, Pe and Dep, which merged into one city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet. The goddess Wadjet was its local goddess, often represented as a cobra, and she was considered the patron deity of Lower Egypt.
The city was an important site in Ancient Egypt since more than ten thousand years. Archaeological evidence shows that Upper Egyptian culture replaced the Buto-culture at the delta when Upper and Lower Egypt were unified.
The Greek historians told that town was celebrated for its temple and oracle of the goddess Wadjet.
They also told that at Buto there was also a sanctuary of Horus.
Scribe
A scribe is an ancient occupation. A scribe's job involved reading and writing, especially during the Renaissance. Being a scribe meant writing letters, and historical records for kings, nobility, and temples. It was an important job when few people could read and write. Later, it changed into being secretaries, clerks: public servants, journalists, accountants and lawyers. Today, there are no scribes, but there are still authors and writers.
The Ancient Egyptian scribe was an important job. Ancient Egypt also had its painters and artisans who decorated tombs, buildings, furniture, statues, and other relics with pictures and hieroglyphics. In Ancient Egypt, only males could be scribes. This was so in many civilisations, because most official positions were exclusively male.
The scribes had to be able to write not only the hieroglyphs, but also the hieratic (priestly) script, and they had to know arithmetic. They used a type of paper called papyrus, made from reeds, and wrote with reed pens and ink.
Ascension
Ascension is a Christian holiday. The word "ascension" means "going up". According to the story told in the Bible, Jesus ascended (went up) to heaven. This was seen by his apostles. The holiday is celebrated forty days after his resurrection. The story tells that Jesus' body went to heaven, and that in heaven he sits at the right-hand side of God the Father.
Ascension Day is officially celebrated on a Thursday. However, not all countries hold the feast on this day. It is one of the ecumenical feasts. All Christians celebrate this feast, much like Easter and Pentecost. It is a very important feast in the calendar of the Christian Church.
In some countries (at least in Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany (since the 1930s), Haiti, Iceland, Indonesia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Namibia, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Vanuatu) it is a public holiday; Germany also holds its Father's day on the same date.
The Eastern Orthodox Church calculates the date of Easter differently, so the Eastern Orthodox celebration of Ascension will usually be after the western observance (either one week, or four weeks, or five weeks later; but occasionally on the same day). The earliest possible date for the feast is May 13 (of the western calendar), and the latest possible date is June 16. Some of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, however, observe Ascension on the same date as the Western Churches.
The feast is observed with an all-night vigil.
The Epistle to the Romans is a book from the Bible which was written about the year 56 or 57. In it, Paul describes Christ as in heaven and in the abyss. This seems to be the earliest Christian reference to Jesus in heaven.