English Phonotypic Alphabet

The English Phonotypic Alphabet (EPA) is a phonetic alphabet developed by Sir Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis, originally as an English language spelling reform.^[2] Although never gaining wide acceptance, elements of it were incorporated into the modern International Phonetic Alphabet.^[3]

It was originally published in June 1845 in The Phonotypic Journal, a sister publication of The Phonetic Journal.^[4] Subsequently, adaptations were published which extended the alphabet to the German, Arabic, Spanish, Tuscan, French, Welsh, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese and Sanskrit languages.^[5]

26 EPA letters are in the pipeline for publication by Unicode in 2026.^[6]

The philosophical case for the EPA was made by Ellis, who conducted an extensive study of the problems with English orthography, which he published in his treatise Plea for Phonetic Spelling, or the Necessity of Orthographic Reform, in 1848.^[7] Learned societies such as the London Philological Society and education journals such as The Massachusetts Teacher debated the arguments for reform and the utility of the EPA.^[8][9]

When the EPA was trialled for teaching literacy, it was found that after learning to read and write, students effortlessly transitioned their literacy skills to traditional English orthography. This gave additional purpose to the EPA for being used as a transitional mechanism to improve the teaching of literacy.^[10][11]

The EPA had many different letter systems, depending on the author. Below are two early examples.

At this stage, long vowels had a cross-bar, and short vowels did not. There were also no lowercase letterforms; only capital forms were used.

The ultimate objective of the EPA was to improve literacy levels; as such, to demonstrate its efficacy, it was trialled for teaching literacy in many different settings. It was mainly tried in schools with children but also illiterate inmates of workhouses, reformatories and jails and by missionaries in Africa, China & India. In 1849, its potential was shown when 1,300 Mancunian illiterates were taught to read and write in only a few months.^[12]

These trials culminated in the adoption of the EPA in two public school districts in the United States: Waltham, Massachusetts, between 1852–60 and Syracuse, New York, between 1850–66. Both districts used a variant of the EPA known as the Cincinnati Phonotypy or the American Phonetic Alphabet.^[13] This type was used by Longley Brothers to publish a set of reading-books: a first phonetic reader, a second phonetic reader, and a transition reader.^[14][15][16]

In the 1852–53 annual report of Waltham's school committee, the chairman, Reverend Thomas Hill, reported the effect of learning the EPA on the 800 pupils within the ten schools:^[17]

It has been proved in repeated experiment that if a child upon his first learning his letters, is taught the Phonetic Alphabet, and is confined to Phonetic books for the first six to eight months of schooling, he will at the end of the first year's schooling read common print and spell in common spelling better than children will ordinarily do at the end of four or five year's instruction.^[12]

Bothe's analysis of the course of study for the Syracuse school district measured the improvement from using the EPA:

In 1855, before the introduction of the transitional alphabet, the student was expected to finish reading Webb's Second Reader by the end of the third grade. In 1858, the first year in which phonetic texts appeared in the course of study, Webb's Second Reader was entirely completed two-thirds through the second grade (four trimesters gained).^[18]

Edwin Leigh extensively practised using the EPA to teach literacy. He became persuaded of its efficacy and a passionate advocate but failed to convince his own St. Louis school district to adopt it. He concluded that the EPA was not widely accepted because parents, teachers, and district officials could not understand the orthography themselves.^[19] Leigh subsequently designed a spiritual successor system, Pronouncing Orthography, in an attempt to address some of these flaws.^[20]

• Ellis, Alexander John (1848). Plea for Phonetic Spelling: or the Necessity of Orthographic Reform (2 ed.). London: Fred Pitman.
• Bothe, Albert (1 December 1967). Nineteenth-century experiments with transitional reading media (PDF) (Thesis). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
• Hill, Thomas (1889). "A Way to Teach English Spelling". The Forum. 7 (2): 186–187 – via Internet Archive.
• Leigh, Edwin (1864), Pronouncing Orthography (PDF), pp. 1–13, archived from the original (PDF) on 2 July 2023
• Longley, Elias (1851a). First Phonetic Reader (4 ed.). Cincinnati: Longley Brothers.
• Longley, Elias (1851b). Second Phonetic Reader (1 ed.). Cincinnati: Longley Brothers.
• Longley, Elias (1855). Transition Reader (1 ed.). Cincinnati: Longley Brothers.
• Marshall, Fiona (1 July 2020). "History of the Philological Society: The Early Years" (PDF). philsoc.org.uk. Retrieved 14 January 2024.
• Pitman, Sir James; St. John, John (1969). Alphabets and Reading, The Initial Teaching Alphabet (1 ed.). London: Pitman. ISBN 0-273-43343-1.
• Withers, George (2023) [1874]. The English Language Spelled as Pronounced (1 ed.). Frankfurt: Outlook. p. 73. ISBN 978-3-368-81052-8.

• Unifon

• Third Revised Proposal to encode characters for the English Phonotypic Alphabet (EPA) in the UCS, October 18th 2011
• Pitman Collection at the University of Bath