In Italian, the “ch” in “che” and “chi” stands for the /k/ sound. In Spanish, “ch” is used for the “ch” English sound. In French, “ch” is used for the “sh” English sound. All of these languages use the Latin alphabet, but the orthographies, or writing systems, differ.
How about if the orthographies of English, French, Italian and Spanish were unified so all letters and letter combinations were pronounced consistently in each language? It would be much easier to read and learn all four languages.
When creating a unified orthography, it would be necessary to consider sounds unique to each language. For example, “th” could stand for the sound as in “thick” and “dh” for the sound as in “this.” The combinations “th” and “dh” are not used in French, Italian or Spanish, so there would be no conflict. The combination “gl,” however, has a different pronunciation in Italian than English, French and Spanish. Perhaps an acceptable solution would be for “gl” to remain as in English, and for “ly” to be used for the Italian sound currently spelled as “gl.”
According to “Presenting the new orthographies” on the Next website, this sort of “orthography harmonization” for Igbo (ibo), Ijo (family), Hausa (hau) and Yoruba (yor) has just been completed after about six months of work.
This work was performed by the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization and the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society. CASAS has worked on similar projects in the past as part of their “Africa-wide Harmonization and Standardization of African Languages Project,” and the next such project will focus on Nigerian Fulfulde (ful) and other languages in Nigeria.
With the unified orthography completed, dissemination must be carried out, including providing new textbooks to educators to ensure the system takes hold.
The unified orthography is provided in four volumes published by CASAS, numbers 240 to 243.
Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba as well as Nigerian Fulfulde each have millions of speakers, but the family of Ijo languages range from Okodia (okd) with a 1977 estimate of 3600 and Nkoroo (nkx) with a 1989 estimate of 4550 to Izon (ijc) with about one million speakers.
Living Languages 