The grapheme is the unit of a given written language, that is, the "letters of its alphabet". As noted in file, "Phoneme" (at this Website), the grapheme of "a" gives rise to two distinct phonemes, the "long a" in "bay" and the "short a" in "cat".

As is well-known, the English language has 26 graphemes:

     A, B, C, D, E,, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X. Y, Z

The great English dramatist, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), was also interested in language, in its oral and written form.

One of Shaw's most popular plays, Pymgmalion, describes a language-teacher who trains a cockney flower seller to speak English well enough to be presented to royalty. This play became a film in 1938, starring Wendy Hiller (as flower seller) and Leslie Howard (as teacher). And, set to music by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Lowe, as My Fair Lady, it became a 1964 film starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in the respective roles.

Shaw spent years in an attempt to reform the phonetics of the alphabet. Part of his will assigned money to a foundation to be set up for this purpose.

Online, at Website "My Phonetics Page", Godfrey Dewey estimates that 4o grapemes are needed for the 40 sounds of standard English. Dewey claims, "A 50% match between phonetic or phonemic spelling and dictionary spelling is the best we can hope for."

As noted in the file, "Graphonyms", as this present Website, attention must be given to words