Featural alphabet

A featural alphabet is an alphabetic script where the relation from letter shape to phoneme is not arbitrary, but the letter shapes encode phonetic features. The only featural alphabet used to write a major natlang is the Korean script (Hangul), but featural conscripts are not rare, the most famous of these being Tengwar, the Elvish alphabet by J. R. R. Tolkien.

List of featural alphabets

• Hangul (Korean; attributed to King Sejong, 15th century)
• Old Albic alphabet (Old Albic; Jörg Rhiemeier, 2013)
• Shavian (English; Ronald Kingsley Read, c. 1960)
• Tengwar (Quenya, Sindarin and others; J. R. R. Tolkien, c. 1930)