English, written by its sounds.

Stemsyl draws each syllable as a short stem with up to three coloured ticks. Where a tick sits and what colour it is names one of English's 38 sounds, so any sound takes two taps on nine keys, even on a watch.

Open the keyboard Read the specification Learn to read it
The sentences Practice makes perfect. We met Jon in London at 7:45 on Monday. written in Stemsyl, with the English under each word

Three free apps

Each app is a single web page. They work offline and keep your notes on your own device.

The phone keyboard with a key for every sound

Keyboard

Write notes in Stemsyl on a phone, tablet or computer. Keys has a key for every sound; 3 × 3 takes two taps a sound. On a computer, type English and it turns into Stemsyl.

Open
The watch keyboard: a line of the note, word suggestions and the 3 by 3 keys

Watch keyboard

The 3 × 3 keyboard and a whole editor in 208 × 248 points. Hold the middle key of an edge for numbers, punctuation, the options or the cursor, and hold delete to clear the text.

Open
The trainer showing a word to read

Trainer

Practise reading: sounds, words, sentences, numerals and punctuation, with every sound spoken.

Open

How it works

Three ideas make the whole script. The specification has every detail.

1

A syllable is a stem

Up to three ticks stand on it: the consonant before the vowel, the vowel, and the consonant after it. A leftover consonant gets a stub of its own.

katscats
2

Colour and place name the sound

Consonants come in eight colour families: up is voiceless, centred the sonorant, down voiced. Each vowel colour holds two vowels.

tndpmbaeye
3

Two taps a sound

On the 3 × 3 keys, tap where the tick goes, then its colour. Words to choose from appear as you go, and the English goes under each word.

The watch keyboard's tick positionsThe centred vowel's colours
The 24 consonants: eight colour families, three positions
24 consonants: the colour is the family, the position says which.
The 14 vowels: seven colours, three positions
14 vowels: centred is plain, up glides to ee, down glides to oo.

Read, download, build on it

SpecificationThe script, the keyboards, the word list, variations and related work, as a web page. Specification (PDF)The same, as a PDF to print or share. Word list271,173 English words in Stemsyl sounds and IPA, commonest first (CC BY-SA 4.0). Source codeThe apps, the build tools, the tests and the word-list pipeline.

Free for everyone, for good. The Stemsyl writing system and its specification are dedicated to the public domain (CC0 1.0). The apps are free software (GPL-3.0-or-later), and the word list is CC BY-SA 4.0.

The specification is published as prior art, so no one can patent these ideas. You may use, teach, adapt and build on them.