William Bullokar

William Bullokar (c. 1531 - 4 March 1609) was a 16th-century English phonetician and printer who devised a 40-letter phonetic alphabet for the English language. His 1586 work Bref Grammar of English was the first printed grammar of the English language.

Early life

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 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, Bullokar wrote the first published grammar of the English language, in a book titled Bref Grammar of English, which appeared in 1586.

In his 1575 pamphlet, button was to spelled butn.

Works

scan:

facsimile edition: facsimile in Bullokar (1977) transcription at Plessow (1906), pp. 237-330

transcription at Plessow (1906), pp. 1-212

transcription at Plessow (1906), pp. 213-235

facsimile in Bullokar (1977) transcription at Plessow (1906), pp. 331-385

transcription at Plessow (1906), pp. 386-390