Phonetic B was developed by Harry Lindgren as an improvement on Phonetic A. The main aim of Phonetic B was to avoid diagraphs. A diagraph is a pair of letters than denote a single sound (for example, 'ee' or 'th'). Phonetic B achieves this by writing special signs above single letters.
So the long vowels in Phonetic B are written é as in lé (lay); ì as in bìn (been); á as in bát (bite); ô as in bôt (boat); and û as in mûn (moon). Other long vowel sounds are à for 'ar' as in fàm (farm); è for 'air' as in fè (fair); ò for 'or' as in fò (for); ù for 'er' as in hù (her); ó for 'oi' as in bó (boy); and â for 'ou' as in ât (out).
Diagraph consonants are also replaced by single letters with signs above them - for example, n circumflex for 'ng' as in 'song'; s circumflex for 'sh' as in 'shop'; z circumflex for 'zh' as 'vision'; t circumflex for unvoiced 'th' as in 'thin'; and d circumflex for voiced 'th' as in 'that'.
Words such as 'the', 'a' and 'to' are often joined onto the following word.
So the sentence "Alf, the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea"
becomes in Phonetic B:
The concise nature of Phonetic B is to be greatly admired. Books written in Phonetic B would be just a
bit more than half as big as books written with conventional spelling. But yet Phonetic B also has the fatal
drawback that it is much too different from traditional spelling to be accepted.
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