ALUPEC
The Alfabeto Unificado para a Escrita do Caboverdiano (Unified Alphabet for Cape Verdean Writing), commonly known as ALUPEC, is the alphabet that was officially recognized by the Cape Verdean government to write Cape Verdean Creole. Description The ALUPEC is a phonetic writing system based on the Latin script and states only which letters should be used to represent each sound. The system does not establish rules for spelling (orthography). For that reason, Cape Verdean creole writing is not standardized; the same word or the same sentence may appear written in different ways. Cape Verdeans write idiosyncratically — that is, each person writes in his or her own dialect, sociolect, and idiolect. The descriptive texts concerning the ALUPEC claim that it is "a system composed by 23 letters and four digraphs". What those texts do not specify is that the ALUPEC also includes the letter Y and the digraph RR. Older documents, such as the 1994 Proposed Criteria of the Unified Alphabet for the Cape Verdean Writing System, showed the following order: A B S D E F G H I J DJ L LH M N NH N̈ O P K R T U V X TX Z Later documents (after 1998) show the following order: A B D DJ E F G H I J K L LH M N NH N̈ O P R S T TX U V X Z The ALUPEC comes close to a perfect phonetic system in that almost every letter represents only one sound and almost every sound is represented by only one letter. The vowels may have a graphic accent, but the system does not consider letters with accents as separate letters. Additional notes: The letter y is used only to represent the copulative conjunction (corresponding to "e" in Portuguese, which means and), in the same fashion as in Spanish. The letter r has the sound only in the beginning of the words. The letter n in the end of the syllables is not pronounced, it only indicates the nasality of the preceding vowel. The personal pronoun that represents the subject form of the first person of the singular (English “I”) is always written with the capital letter N, whatever the pronunciation, whatever the Creole variant. The graphic accents are used to indicate the stressed syllable in proparoxytone words, and to indicate the stressed syllable in oxytone words that do not end in a consonant; the acute accent is also used in paroxytone words when the stressed syllable has the sounds or . When writing Santo Antão Creole and São Vicente Creole, the letter s can be pronounced as , , and , depending on context. This mostly corresponds to the (European) Portuguese s, except, as noted, the intervocalic s (pronounced in Portuguese). See Portuguese phonology. When writing Barlavento Creoles, the letter e is written in the place of vowels that would exist in equivalent Sotavento words. If this written vowel was simply omitted, syllables could be left without vowels, or consonants