Romic alphabet

The Romic Alphabet, sometimes callled the Romic Reform, is a system for writing down sounds proposed by Henry Sweet. It was made from Ellis's Palaeotype alphabet and English Phonotypic Alphabet, and the International Phonetic Alphabet is made from the Romic Alphabet.. In the Romic Alphabet every speech sound had a letter, and every letter was a single sound. There were no big letters; there were letters derived from small capitals, but these were their own letters.

There were two types, Broad Romic and Narrow Romic. Narrow Romic utilized italics to mark small differences  of speech, but Broad Romic was less specific.

Tables
Consonants
The consonants were organized into a table to show how and where in the mouth  the sound was made :Henry Sweet, A Primer of Phonetics, Clarendon Press, 1892.
   Lab. Lab-D. Dent. Alv. Palv. Pal. Velar Labv. Phar. Glot. Nasal mh  ·  m     nh  ·  n   ñh  ·  ñ ŋh  ·  ŋ       Plosive p  ·  b     t  ·  d   c  ·  ɟ k  ·  g     (ʼ)? Fric./approx. ϕ  ·  β f  ·  v þ  ·  ð s  ·  z ʃ  ·  ʒ ç  ·  j x  ·  ᵹ ʍ  ·  w ɹh  ·  ɹ h  ·  Lateral       lh  ·  l   λh  ·  λ ꞁh  ·  ꞁ       Rhotic       rh  ·  r          

Vowels
The vowels were organized into  this table.

 Tense vowels(italicize for lax vowels) Front Central Back High i · y ï · ü ʌ · u Mid e · ə ë · ö a· o Low æ · œ ä · ɔ̈ ɐ · ɔ

In "wide" vowels, the tongue is described as relaxed and flattened; in "narrow", it is tense. This is the same as calling vowels lax and tense. Lax vowels are italicized. Other than the back unrounded vowels and ⟨ə⟩ being the symbol for  IPA [ø], Sweet's vowels is almost the same as the IPA.

Sweet also said the sounds were:
: French , : German , Scots , : Swedish 
: French , : French , : Swedish 
: Welsh , : German , : English sir
: Norwegian , ...
: Gaelic ,This is indeed a high back unrounded vowel  in Scottish Gaelic. : English but,In broad transcription, Sweet used  for French  and Northern German  and, as long , for English father and German , while he used  for English come, which has the same vowel as but (see next symbol) – essentially the same as the usage of these letters in the IPA. However, these transcriptions may be remnants of his earlier sound values for these letters – see #History. : Cockney park
: French , Scots , : German , : English law

The lax vowels are:
: English bit, : English men, : English man
: French , : (German  is  œ but with a rounder mouth)
: English pretty, : start of English eye, better, : start of English how, Portuguese 
: English value, : French 
: English father, : Swedish 
: English put, : German , English boy, : English not

 History 
The 1877 version of the Romic alphabet was a lot different from the 1892 version. It was very similar to Ellis's Paleotype.

Notes

 Bibliography 
 Sweet, Henry. (1877) A Handbooks of Phonnetics, Including a Popular Exposition of the Principles of Spelling Reform, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (on archive.org)

Other websites
 Henry Sweet's Romic alphabet reform

Category:Alphabets