[NLA] taamz phonetic dream

[tom zurinskas]

I fell asleep and had a dream.  I dreamt I was in the
Peace Corps and my task was to drop into the jungle
and teach a local tribe to read and write their own
language.  But the writing system must utilize the 26
letters of the English alphabet so it would be
keyboard friendly.

It occurred to me that their language should be
spelled as phonetically consistently as possible.  And
probably it should be spelled based on an English
phoneme spelling model, because English is the most
important language.  That would also help them learn
English if they ever needed to.  But to do this meant
that the 40 sounds of English needed also to be
spelled that way, without using special symbols as the
dictionaries do.  So I devised a standard set of 40
phoneme spellings and parachuted into paradise.  

When I landed I made peace with the tribe by offering
gifts.  After gaining their confidence I got out my
chalkboard, pointed to myself and said “Tom” and
spelled it phonetically in truespel as “taam”.   And
pointed out the phonemes t-aa-m.  Then pointed to each
of them and asked each their name and wrote them down,
again pointing out the phonemes, ch-ue-bb-aa-k-u,
m-ou-g-l-ee, b-a-thh-sh-ee-b-u, w-i-n-s-t-i-n.

I set up shop and they would say words and I would
spell them. I gave them the chalk and they tried their
hand at spelling with the as well.  They all could
spell their names in short order.  Then one day I came
to the muttaabu hut and saw something scribbled on the
board.  Paazee muezee shubbit kaalaa.(a double
consonant introduces an emphasized syllable).  I read
it out loud.  Instant laughter.  I’d been had.  I
won’t say how.

Soon after that the locals started writing and passing
notes, and after a few months they could write their
own language.  Even more interesting, they starting
writing my English words.  I then realized we had a
standard intermediary spelling based on truespel.  It
was phoneme based not word based.  A word would
sometimes be spelled slightly differently based on
accents.  It didn’t appear to hurt understanding at
all.  Basically they spelled what they heard.  The
thought then occurred, wouldn’t it be a fine thing if
we had one phonetic spelling for all languages based
on the keyboard.  We could read each other’s languages
phonetically.  In effect, that is what truespel does. 
The English language is done already.

The moral of this story is that phonetics needs to
come first.  The letters of the alphabet stand for
sounds.  Words are sounded out first, and then comes
instant visual recognition.   Ontogeny really does
recapitulate phylogeny.   Or as the tribe would write
“Aanttaajinee reekuppitchulaets fillaajinee.  But they
wouldn’t know what that means.  Or would they?

taam


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Read all about truespel at truespel.com.  
Convert text to truespel USA accent by copy/pasting it at: http://www.foreignword.com/dictionary/truespel/transpel.htm

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