William Bullokar (c. 1531 - 4 March 1609)[1] was a 16th-century English phonetician and printer who devised a 40-letter phonetic alphabet for the English language.[2] His 1586 work Bref Grammar of English was the first printed grammar of the English language.[3]
Bullokar lived in London for the beginning of his life. At around 1550, he began to teach, and noticed that the particular spellings of words would cause disagreement amongst teachers and students. He decided that 24 letters were not sufficient to capture the English language, and devised instead an alphabet of 40 letters.
Bullokar's alphabet's characters were presented in the black-letter or "gothic" writing style commonly used at the time and also in Roman type. Taking as his model a Latin grammar by William Lily,[4] Bullokar wrote the first published grammar of the English language, in a book titled Bref Grammar of English, which appeared in 1586.[5]
In his 1575 pamphlet, button was to spelled butn.
The letters of Bullokar's alphabet as published in 1580William Bullokar's alphabet with upper and lower-case letters as published in 1580
A sample of Bullokar's alphabet handwrittenBullokar, William (1580). Booke at large, for the Amendment of Orthographie for English Speech. London: Henrie Denham.
Bullokar, William (1977). Booke at Large for the Amendment of English Orthographie (1580) with A Bref Grammar for English (1586). Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints. ISBN978-0-8201-1287-9.
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