Jiugong Phonetic Alphabet and its main characteristics
九宫音标及其主要特性

摘要

国际音标使绝大多数英语单词的读音和拼写形式分家，学习者为发音和阅读需要学习两套字母形式从而变成了双倍的记忆负担。为解决这一主要难题，新近研制出了一种由英语字母以及单点标、双点标、短横标、长横标、颜色标等5种直接加到英语字母上表示英语单词读音信息的标记符号即音信标或变音符等近乎完美组合或融合而成的不同于国际音标的英语单词注音系统，简称为九宫音标。这5种为引导正确读音和便捷阅读单词的音信标或变音符被概括为点横色标,其中的点横标位于英语字母的上方或下方，与没有任何标音符号的英语字母所表示的读音是不相同的，也是形与音相互对应的。能将单词的读音与拼写统一起来的九宫音标因具有多种功能和特性必将成为国际音标的有益补充和部分替代,特别是快速记住英语单词读音和拼写形式的得力助手！

Abstract

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) leads to the separation between pronunciation and spelling of the most majority of English words and requires a double memorizing burden of English learners, i.e., that s/he should learn two alphabets, IPA for pronunciation and the regular one for reading. In order to solve the main problem a new English phonetic notation system has been newly developed by means of the almost perfect combination or blending between English letters and the five pronunciation informative marks or diacritics added to English letters to indicate the pronunciation information of English words and so on, which system is referred to as Jiugong Phonetic Alphabet (JPA for short) that is different to IPA. The five markings or diacritics to guide learners to the correct English pronunciation and to read words readily comprise single-dotted and double-dotted marks, short-horizontal and long-horizontal marks and colorful marks and are summed up as dotted-horizontal-colorful marks, one of the former two is placed over or under a letter to show that the letter should be pronounced differently from the same letter without any mark, which markers to designate sounds are indicators of letter-sound correspondences. Because of its various functions and characteristics, JPA that can unify the pronunciation and spelling of words would surely be a beneficial complement or partial replacement to IPA and a very powerful assistant for quickly memorizing the sounds and the spelling of English words in particular.