Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond consistently to the language's phonemes (the smallest units of speech that can differentiate words), or more generally to the language's diaphonemes.

For a systemic analyis of the phoneme/grapheme correspondence Petr Sgall, disinguishes two conditions, both of which are to be satisfied for a phonemic orthography:

• (a) in any context the given grapheme is pronounced as the same phoneme ("uniqueness of pronunciation")
• (b) in any context the given phoneme is written with the same grapheme ("uniqueness of spelling")

See also

• Alphabetic principle
• English-language spelling reform
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• Spelling
• Morphophonology
• Orthographic depth
• Orthographic transcription