Biodata for Tom Veatch

His first and entirely forgotten language was Thai, as his parents brought him to live in Bangkok as an infant, and took him away at 4. His degrees are from Stanford University (B.A. Linguistics and Cognitive Science) and University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D. Linguistics, thesis title "English Vowels").

His four careers, so far, include academic teaching as Visiting Assistant Professor at Stanford through 1993, the technology business in sales and software through 2005, a career as a union plumber in Seattle, and presently landlord for a few rentals during retirement.

Dr. Veatch has wide interests including everything linguistic especially phonetics, business, computer science, and human emotion as an academic subject. He is known for writing the currently dominant Theory of Humor -- according to him!

Tom has written more than 150 essays on various subjects at his website, TomVeatch.com, which also has some language related software services.

In 2022-2026 he studied Sanskrit at University of Washington, where the Sanskrit program is continuous for more than 100 years, though wobbling lately (materials here and Sanskrit from English (n.b.: English from Hindi).

Tom is focussed currently on basic phonetic literacy. According to his innovation, phonetics can be taught without academic requirements or even any particular language by using phonetic charts with line-drawings instead of Latin words. TomVeatch.com/read has such a chart.

If successful, anyone over 4 years old can learn a phonetic script such as the International Phonetic Alphabet, with 1-to-1 relationship between sounds and letters, in a short time. Since a phonetic spelling is directly speakable by humans, learners of IPA gain a solid foundation. By removing ambiguity it accelerates learning in all aspects of language. Conveniently, Roman letter (English) signage can be read usefully by a person who reads/writes IPA; imperfectly since English spelling is only 80-90% phonetic, but usefully since an imperfect pronunciation beats none at all. He returns to India in September 2026 to create Teachers and Teacher-Educators of this method.

I should mention, in case of serendipity, my second priority on this trip: to directly support illiterate people.

• 1) That cell phone providers (Jio, Mumbai; and ??) put my web app on their cell phones, bringing literacy to illiterate people who otherwise would not be customers AND increasing sales.
• 2) That government-subsidized food distribution could include IPA paper charts (with QR code to web apps) for illiteracy.
• 3) Should I mention my new data-driven language learning apps? English from Hindi: https://TomVeatch.com/uotd/?l1=hi&l2=en Sanskrit from English: https://TomVeatch.com/uotd/?l1=en&l2=sa

Contact details.