What is a "Vigesimal?"
A vigesimal (/vɪˈdʒɛsɪməl/ vij-ESS-im-əl) or base-20 (base-score) numeral system is based on twenty (in the same way in which the decimal numeral system is based on ten). Vigesimal is derived from the Latin adjective vicesimus, meaning 'twentieth'.
What's the Deseret Alphabet?
The Deseret alphabet (/ˌdɛzəˈrɛt/; Deseret: 𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻 or 𐐔𐐯𐑆𐐲𐑉𐐯𐐻) is a phonemic English-language spelling reform developed between 1847 and 1854 by the board of regents of the University of Deseret under the leadership of Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).[5] George D. Watt is reported to have been the most actively involved in the development of the script's novel characters,: which were used to replace those of the 1847 version of Isaac Pitman's English phonotypic alphabet. He was also the "New Alphabet's" first serious user: The script gets its name from the word deseret, a hapax legomenon in the Book of Mormon, which is said to mean "honeybee" in the only verse it is used in...
Click here for more informationWhat's Shavian?
The Shavian alphabet (/ˈʃeɪviən/ SHAY-vee-ən; also known as the Shaw alphabet) is a constructed alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonemic orthography for the English language to replace the inefficiencies and difficulties of conventional spelling using the Latin alphabet. It was posthumously funded by and named after the playwright George Bernard Shaw and designed by Ronald Kingsley Read, a professional signwriter and letterer. Shaw set three main criteria: the new alphabet should be
- at least 40 letters (it ended up with 48, including ligatures),
- as phonetic as possible (that is, letters should have a 1:1 correspondence to phonemes), and
- distinct from the Latin alphabet (to avoid the impression that the new spellings were simply misspellings).