Introduction

Shiptak developed from an archive of written English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian as well as recordings of spoken General American English.

Phonology

When possible, a word's pronunciation is the same as it had been archived. Although when no spoken record exists, and especially outside of careful speech, that's not the case:

1. /θ/ and /ð/ become /t/ and /v/ respectively
2. /ɛ/ and /eɪ/ have merged to become /e/
3. /æ/ becomes either /ɛ/ before a voiceless consonant or /ei/ before a voiced consonant.
4. /oʊ/ and /aɪ/ monophthongise as /o/ and /a/ respectively.
5. /ɑ/ becomes either /a/ before a voiceless consonant or /o/ before a voiced consonant.
6. voiced /b/, /d/, and /g/ devoice and merge with /p/, /t/, and /k/.
7. syllabic /ɫ/ vocalises to become /o/.
8. /ɪ/ becomes /e/ when stressed or within monosyllabic words and /i/ otherwise.
9. /ʊ/ becomes /ə/ when stressed or within monosyllabic words and /u/ otherwise.
10. the rhotic consonant is realised as /ʋ/, and any vocalic rhoticity is dropped.

Orthography

Spelling conventions are largely unchanged from those of English, although differences do exist: "tak" instead of "talk", "smol" instead of "small", "caf" instead of "cough", and "sayd" instead of "said" to name just a few examples.