NAVLIPI is a new (2012) world alphabet (universal script, universal alphabet, world orthography) usable for all the world’s languages.

NAVLIPI was invented specifically to address phonemic ^[**^] characteristics unique to languages, which make it difficult, e.g., to write Hindi and Tamil, or Mandarin and English, in the same alphabet. 

So someone wanting to read or write very varied languages from all over the world in a single alphabet would use NAVLIPI.

[**A phone is any sound. A phoneme is a phone with linguistic significance. The test for a phoneme in a particular language is if substituting one phone for another in it changes the meaning of the word. Thus in English, pet and bet have entirely different meanings, so the phones (sounds) p and b are different phonemes in English. But in Mandarin, pu and bu both mean “no/not”, so p and b are part of (are allophones of) the same phoneme in Mandarin. Similarly, in English vet and wet have entirely different meanings, so the sounds v and w are different phonemes in English. But in Hindi, van and wan both mean “forest”, so v and w are the same phoneme in Hindi. A phonemic alphabet needs to be able to convey this information.**]

NAVLIPI is based on the Latin (Roman) alphabet, and uses the 26 letters (characters) of this alphabet as used for English, plus just the following 13 additional letters (whose use is described below) and 4 symbols (used for tones), for a total of 42 letters/symbols:

• (Letters described from Greek): Ω, ε, ր
• (Transformed letters): ɔ(inverted-c), ƪ (inverted-j), z, ŧ, đ  
• (Repurposed letter): q
• (New letters): Ƹ, ȓ, ⱡ, ƞ  
• (Letters used to indicate aspiration and fricatization, respectively): h_o, hᵩ.
• (Symbols used for tones in tonal languages): |, ⌡, ⌠ᴗ, ┌    

NAVLIPI is a phonetic alphabet, conveying accurate phonetic information, with a one-to-one correspondence of its letters with sounds (phones), as well as a phonemic alphabet, conveying and encoding phonemic information, the first alphabet to do so. 

NAVLIPI also expresses tones, clicks and creaky sounds (for those languages that have these) very easily and intuitively. NAVLIPI uses no diacritics (accent marks). And it does distinguish between upper and lower case (where, e.g., the Indian alphabets don’t). 

Simple, intuitive NAVLIPI keyboards for phones/tablets are available free from the Google Play and Apple Store; and for Windows-PC/MAC laptops, also free, from the NAVLIPI website. 

NAVLIPI is starting to be used for communication at meetings of the academic linguistics community in India, as a bridge alphabet when presenting work on totally different Indian languages, such as Malayaalam and Hindi. Being very recognizable due to its origins in the Latin alphabet, it avoids scholars having to learn entirely new alphabets (e.g. Malayaalam or Hindi/Dewanaagari). It is also starting to find use in Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics. 

For comparison, the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association   (IPA Alphabet) currently (2024) has 173 letters, and does not convey or encode phonemic information in the way that NAVLIPI does. It is widely used by specialists, but, to date, by no world language as its main alphabet. Its many letters are difficult to recognize and distinguish, and it is very cumbersome to keyboard. It also has some errors and incompleteness for non-European languages, stemming from its Eurocentric origins. 

For more detail on using NAVLIPI, see the tab Basics of NAVLIPI above.