World Unity Alphabet

The World Unity Alphabet alphabet (WUA) was invented by Shane Gartner as a writing system that can be used to write virtually any language. You could call it his hope for the future where all nations of the world will be united in peace and harmony.

He used existing alphabets to construct the language into a uniform font, bringing together the idea of world unity (hence the name). The template he came up with is a circle with six triangular sections that looks sort of like a Trivial Pursuit "pie" piece, which he likes to think represents the six (inhabited) continents and their nations. It can also be two peace symbols stacked on top of each other. He borrowed characters from as many different languages as he could as an "original" design for each letter. He borrowed from some languages more than once, taking in account how many people speak them.

Notable features

Type of writing system: alphabet

Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines.

Used to write: just about any language

Every character's design is based on a "root" character from another written language.

Using this design as a model of the world (or two 'peace' symbols on top of each other), the characters are made up from segments of this model.

The six sections represent the six (inhabited) continents and their peoples.

World Unity Alphabet (W.U.A.)

Vowels

Vowel diacritics

Consonants

Consonant diacritics

Diacritics

Because many languages have distinctions between similar consonants and vowels, (e.g. [o] and [ɤ]), W.U.A. uses diacritics ("moons") to distinguish between certain sound shifts.

Tone indication

Numerals

Punctuation

The WUA can use any form of punctuation, depending on the language being written.

Sample text

Transliteration

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Constructed scripts for: Ainu | Arabic | Chinese languages | Dutch | English | Hawaiian | Japanese | Korean | Russian | Sanskrit | Spanish | Tagalog | Taino | Turkish | Vietnamese | Welsh | Other natural languages | Colour-based scripts | Phonetic/universal scripts | Constructed scripts for constructed languages | Adaptations of existing alphabets | Fictional alphabets | Magical alphabets | A-Z index | How to submit a constructed script

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If you need to type in many different languages, the Q International Keyboard can help. It enables you to type almost any language that uses the Latin, Cyrillic or Greek alphabets, and is free.

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