[NLA] taamz phonetic dream

Art LaChance arthur at ellijay.com
Wed Sep 11 16:33:56 EDT 2002


> Tom,
>
Exactly, this is probably one of the most difficult factors for people to understand.  It's not something that can be
taught I think, but must be recognized via experience, and one of the critical elements in defining viable processes is
that they are often defined and directed and supported by those who have no direct experience.

Words are assembled by combining individual letter sounds.  Sentences, or complete thoughts are assembled by combining
individual word sounds.  The assembly process cannot be circumvented and still retain meaning.  The way we get context
from language is by combination of words the exact same way we combine letters to make words.  If the student is unable to
do this there is no comprehension.

Thanks,

art



> 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?
>
>
tom zurinskas wrote:

> 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
>
> =====
> 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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