The links at left list many of the world's major languages, first in their current alphabet, and then in the Musa Alphabet. How many of them can you read, or even identify?

The Musa Alphabet is another way of writing English and all these other languages, an alternative to this Roman alphabet and the many other scripts of the world.

I don't have to explain to you that English spelling is crazy - you learned that in school. You had to learn that why, rye, sigh, buy, tie & hi all rhyme, but that rough, cough, though, through & bough don't. And you probably have a dictionary (with pronunciation guide) or a spell checker nearby.

Having crazy spelling not only makes it harder for us all to learn to read and write while growing up, but it also makes it harder for speakers of foreign languages to learn English and for us to learn their languages. How are we supposed to know that the Champs Elysées is pronounced shawn zayleezay?

But why don't we just fix English spelling, keeping our familiar alphabet? Well, many people have tried to do that, but it turns out that the results aren't as familiar as you'd think. Here are some examples:

By the time you've learned how to spell and read familiar words all over again, you might as well learn a new alphabet, especially if it's better.

The Musa Alphabet isn't the first new alphabet for English. One of the best is the Shavian alphabet (named after George Bernard Shaw), which looks like this:

But the Musa Alphabet is a universal alphabet, designed to be shared by many languages. And it has only 10 basic shapes, so it's easy to learn and makes the Musa keyboard (below) much less complicated than, for instance, the one on your phone.

Those shapes pair up to form hundreds of letters, but each language will only use the ones it needs. For instance, English uses only about 50 of the letters. Each letter might be pronounced slightly differently for different languages - an English t sounds subtly different from a Hindi t - but we don't really care: each language just uses the best letter for each of its sounds.

The Musa Alphabet is featural: the shapes represent phonetic features. For example, nasal consonants like m n ng alll feature a triangular top, and retroflex consonants all feature a zigzag bottom. And it's also iconic: letters share features with their sounds. For example, rounded vowels are round, and closed vowels are closed. Sounds made in the front of the mouth face towards the front (left), and sharp sounds are sharp letters. As a result, letters that sound alike look alike.

As you can see at left, the Musa Alphabet can also be written in several different gaits: as an alphabet, as cursive script, as a syllabary or as characters. This helps Musa look familiar all over the world, and adapts it to the needs of each language. But all these gaits still use the same letters, so everybody can read it.

One final advantage: Unlike most of the other alphabets of the world, Musa is neutral: it's not associated with any religion, culture, country or region of the world. Instead of expressing your identity as you write, Musa lets you express your openness to others, no matter who they are. It's a way of uniting, instead of dividing.

For those of you now thinking "This will never work, because ...", I offer answers to some of the questions I've heard. For those of you who are simply curious, open-minded or returning to this page with their questions answered, why not take a quick look at Musa?

Questions

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A Quick Look at Musa >