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In order to see text using Gilo Alphabet characters, it is necessary to download the Gilo Font Gilo True Type Font (32KB). Use the right mouse button (not the left) and 'Save Target as ...' (MS Internet Explorer) or 'Save Link as ...' (Firefox) will enable you to copy the file onto your computer prior to installing. (Clicking with the left button only gives a preview of the font and does not enable you to download and install it). Save the font file into any convenient folder on your computer.
This is a True Type font and can be installed very easily through: 'My Computer > Control Panel (Classic View)> Fonts > File > Install New Font'. Find the folder containing the font file and it will appear in the box.
In order to give the best appearance to the font, it is necessary to make sure that kerning (automatic letter spacing) is turned on. This can be done for each style type by: 1. Format>Style>Modify> (For Word 2003 go direct to 2) 2. Format>Font>Character Spacing>Kerning for fonts (check)>OK>OK>Apply'
The alphabet is made up of symbols from a basic 'cartwheel' sign.
Note: Three of the normal Roman alphabet letters are given their own consonant sounds. 'c' is pronounced 'ch' (as in cheese), 'q' is pronounced 'the' (as in thesaurus) and 'x' is pronounced 'she' (as in shed).
Two new vowels are added to the Roman alphabet. These use existing symbols on the English Language keyboard layout. The first is ã a(r) pronounced as in far and uses the semi-colon key. The capital : uses the colon key. The second is ø o(r) pronounced as in fort and uses the hash key (#). The capital ~ uses the tilde key (~). All characters in the Gilo alphabet are made from components of the original cartwheel pattern.
Gilo is written along a theoretical centre line through the 'hub' of each symbol.
The cartwheel, with its 16 basic components (i.e. 8 arms and 8 arcs) can form many hundreds of symbols, although only about 50 are required for normal use (i.e. alphabet letters, numbers, mathematical and punctuation symbols).
Hand-written symbols will still need to written reasonably carefully to maintain legibility. There would be an advantage for people to learn the pen strokes in a more formalised way, in order to standardise the handwriting (in a similar way that Chinese & Japanese children are taught the correct order in which the pen strokes for the Kanji characters are to be made). E.g.
In Gilo there are no upper or lower case letters. Initial letters of sentences, proper names and initials (such as UN etc) have the 'za' circle around them, which then forms the equivalent of upper case e.g. :-
Gilo, John Smith, UN Gilo, Jon Smiq, UN
Full stops (periods) come at the end of a sentence but always on the centre line. A conventional one letter space gap is used between words, after full stops (periods) and between number parts. A right comma (font symbol 44) is used between phrases and parts of a number.
The present IPA characters are a peculiar set of modified Roman characters which are virtually unknown outside language teaching. However they are the only simple way of expressing the majority of sounds used in normal language.
There are sufficient unused Gilo symbols available to incorporate all of the main International Phonetic Alphabet and other associated characters. Where the IPA character has a similar (but slightly different) sound to a Gilo character, then by the addition of parts of the perimeter arc to the Gilo symbol it is possible to form a new symbol and demonstrate its linkage and similarity. E.g. the Gilo character for 'n' is n.
The nasal 'ng', which is shown by the Phonetic Alphabet character
Other similar 'n' sounds,
such as
There are several implications for this. It could mean that languages presently using the Roman alphabet could be written using a particular subset of the full, international Gilo alphabet. This would avoid the confusing idiosyncrasies presently found in many languages due to pronunciations of words being quite different to their spellings (particularly in languages such as English and French). This could make the learning of other second languages much easier since students would see the Gilo phonetic symbol and be able to see the similarity to other Gilo characters from which the sound has originated and what the correct pronunciation should be.
However we have to bear in mind that word recognition may depend as much on spelling (no matter how idiosyncratic) and that national culture may require the retention of what might not be totally logical spelling systems!
The Gilo font has been created as a True Type font using a proprietary font writing programme 'TypeTool' from the Fontlab Company. The Gilo version used in this text is version 1.5. A number of additional symbols are still required. These will be created in the near future. For example the Gilo letter 'ke' in its simplest form is just k or K .
The font currently used is designed to be as simple as possible and is probably best compared to a Gilo version of Ariel.
However, we can also create letters such as In other words, the Gilo alphabet is capable of being represented in a complete range of different fonts. It would therefore be possible to have the Gilo equivalents of all of the present fonts used for the existing Roman alphabet - Comic, Gothic, Times New Roman, Lucida etc.
There are two main problems. One is that it is already too complicated, with upper case, lower case and handwritten letters which may differ. The second, more important problem, is that the sounds of the letters in the Roman alphabet differ between different languages and even within a single language. For example in English, the Concise Oxford Dictionary gives :- 7 different pronunciations of the letter 'a' 6 different pronunciations of the letter 'e' 4 different pronunciations of the letter 'i' 10 different pronunciations of the letter 'o' 4 different pronunciations of the letter 'u' all differing according to the context, preceding and following letters and historical usage. If you compare the pronunciations of Roman letters in some of the major European languages e.g. English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, they all differ! There is not a single Roman letter which has a constant pronunciation throughout these languages! There are probably only four Roman letters that could be considered as having a 'standard' pronunciation by the majority of nations: - d, k, m & p.
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which are still perfectly clear Gilo characters.
