I
Front Matter
Visible Speech
Script invented in 1867 by Alexander Melville Bell, representing the movements of human vocal organs (tongue position, lip shape, vocal cord vibration) as symbols.
Script invented in 1867 by Alexander Melville Bell, representing the movements of human vocal organs (tongue position, lip shape, vocal cord vibration) as symbols. His son Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone) used this system in deaf education. The phonetics professor Higgins in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (basis for the musical My Fair Lady) was modeled on the Bells' work. A precursor to both the modern IPA and speech synthesis technology.
III
The Letters
Signs · Unicode · TypesSample GlyphsClick to copy
Unicode
Total signs52
Unicode Blocks
Not in Unicode
Not yet encoded in Unicode. Formal allocation is pending due to undeciphered status or insufficient evidence.
Glyph evolution
Form change over time
Loading evolution data…
V
Reading Mechanics
Direction · Method↔
Direction
Left to Right (LTR)
좌→우 (LTR)
α
System
Alphabet
⌨
Input method
Direct Unicode input
Keyboard layout
Standard IME · input chart
Keyboard layout data not yet available.
VI
The Lineage
Family · DescendantsPhylogeny
Descendants of hieroglyphs
Phylogeny
Related scripts
Ancestors · Descendants · Family
VII