Friday February 7

First Contact

We drove up to a canal feeding under a road into a bay full of water buffaloes and young boys. Over here four five buildings made of mud walls and tarpaulin roofs. In ten minutes the whole village, 5 ladies, 6 children under 12, are sitting in a carpet with two chairs in front. Me in one, Pratibha the other. Giving a lecture on the benefits of literacy. From nowhere comes a bowl with sticks and fire, they wanted us to be warm.

Motivation

BUY/SELL: Buy or sell, any issue, price change or any fraud, you have evidence IF YOU ARE LITERATE - write a receipt.

MESSAGE: If your people are far away you can write a letter — IF YOU (both) ARE LITERATE.

If your people are in the future or the past, unborn grandchildren or wise teachers, you can tell them your name, your message, your will and wishes, their inheritance; similarly you can learn from the past — IF YOU ARE LITERATE.

Please come tomorrow and we will explain phonetic writing with paper.

Aims

Even the Gurjar people in the remote Dehradun countryside have all their children in school. Their mothers went to school not at all or maybe up to 3 years.

Still there are many targets for this arrow.

We learned that aiming to inspire mothers to coach their children to have basic reading

is unnecessary here,

We learned that aiming to provide group self-study basic literacy to illiterate women in, and staying in, their homes and local communities,

is a valid aim.

• may or may not lead to full Hindi literacy and
• may or may not lead to Gurjar literacy and
• may or may not lead to Roman-letter signage (80%!) reading capability and
• may or may not suffer a communication gap between teachers and students.

Monday we will go to a local government school to observe and learn and ask questions.

After the lecture the mothers offered us food. They wanted to give back.

We will be back with IPA charts tomorrow same time. And some chips and pencils and paper. (In the end we forgot the chips!)

I find this very touching and meaningful.

Last news for today.

I had a nice talk with Ambu a.k.a. Varad Naithani, age 11, here.

His advice: if a subject says they are illiterate then the assessments with Devanagari and with Roman letters are unnecessary.

I can agree with that only after a test. If a number of self described illiterates actually do fail the letter recognition tests, until p<0.05, then we can assume self-described illiteracy predicts the rest. So, perhaps yes, after some data agrees.

Good point Ambu!

Am I too skeptical? Can I take self description at face value, without empirical verification?

Saturday February 8

General learnings

Look, you must understand India is growing just as fast as it possibly can. Most shops are building construction materials. All the men seem to be driving cement or gravel trucks, from what I see. Everyone is living in a construction zone, all phases of foundation work, wall and post pouring, wall-infill brickwork, and or finish stucco or trim installation are going on. Most buildings seem very new.

Neeraj Naithani is no exception, we had a housewarming puja in his upstairs meditation room and a feast for neighbors and family, yesterday. The construction is almost done, workers are staining the window wood trim or installing the fiberoptic cables to the house.

I am shocked, here I am editing a file on a server in New Jersey or California, from a $25 laptop, using WiFi to a fast internet in a new house in a new growing suburb between Dehra Dun, with sub-section response time. In 1982 I wrote letters from India to my parents on the special international blue lightweight stationery, and waited weeks for a reply which I did not even expect to receive. Now, the document I write is already there, and the keystrokes travel, with return receipt, between the stroke of one key and the next. I don't think I will get over this miracle very quickly.

Ladies Can Use Help

Pratibha's contact Sima Dhami works for the government to run a self-help group. These are illiterate ladies figuring out ways to employ themselves, which they do in industries like honey, mustard oil, jute bags, spices etc. I am to be toured about in a couple of these and perhaps help with some literacy.

English from IPA

Now an IPA training program will give a person the ability to read IPA transcriptions, yes, but also English writing with some adjustments as history has changed English pronunciation in 960 years.

Modern English can be read with an IPA interpretation, and mostly pronounced in a pronounceable way. Although such forms are indeed 'wrong' because different from an English pronouncing dictionary entry, even so, an IPA-interpreted pronunciation of an English orthographically spelled word is actually pronounceable enough to be useful for many purposes, such as reading signs and maps.

So if we offer IPA we also give the ability to navigate English signage, which is a big advance for everyone, despite the limitation of differences between IPA and English orthography. Every Roman letter is also in IPA with reasonable default pronunciation. Only "c"[č], "x"[x], and "q"[q] cause bad trouble.

"c" is [k] in "plastic" or [s] in "center"
"x" is [ks] in "ax" or [z] in "xylophone"
"q" is [k] in "quiz"

Plan

English

• 1) Explain Motivation:
  • travel: read maps, directions, signs
  • buy/sell: prevent cheating, write receipt, exchange agreement (contract)
  • message: to or from your people far in place or time.
    • write/read letter to far away people
    • explain to future children's children
    • learn from rhe past, wise knowledge.

• 2) Explain sound-writing (IPA) versus historical-form-writing (Orthography).

• 3) Explain the dimensions of sounds:
  • A vowel is as loud as you want, and unconstricted from glottis to lips.
    
  • Vowels differ in height and backness/rounding, and length.

  • Consonants have a constriction at some place with some action or manner.

  • [a]
    
  • [a:]
    
  • nasals stop with nose closed, so nose is open in nasal
    
  • [m] etc.

• 4) Explain: Practice write-and-speak full line(s), 30x.

• 5) Explain: sounds to symbols and back.
  • Split words into sounds: baba → b aa b aa.
    
  • Write sounds with symbols.
    
  • Read symbols as sounds, re-assemble into words.

• 6) Explain: Keep Learning 1-2-3 months.
  • Every day look at the signs.
    
  • Say the letters you know.
    
  • Remember the ones you don't know.
    
  • At home, find it, decode it, then practice it write-and-speak.

  • After 1 month you will know what you need.

  • After this keep going, no limit to your power!

February 9, 2025

And What Actually Happened

Then on Friday, First, we met the ladies self help group, wonderful.

All are literate, well-spoken, hard-working, family-supporting responsible ladies, after a chat with six, we went over to watch the bakery training where 20-30 more were receiving instructions how to make laddus from their baking teacher, they are organized in their local ladies self-help group to do a variety of small businesses such as spice processing/packaging, 650 ladies work together in 65 groups and figure out how to make a living together.

I could not help them much since this project offers basic phonetic literacy and they are already Devanagari and Roman literate.

But they asked me to speak and I said, you can read and write, so if you encounter another who cannot red and write please teach others. If you know then you can teach, so please be aware, and take my permission and teach. Everyone is climbing the ladder and nobody is looking down. Sometime look down and see who is around you and maybe you can help them, and please help them if you can.

Then I gave everyone with a camera phone the QR code so they can download and print the Instrument as may be needed later.

And before leaving I bought some yummy savory bites of I'm not sure what grain based "namkeen", some coriander and chili pepper and turmeric.

Assessment and Results

First, everyone else: Close your eyes!

Showing a letter on a card: What is this? 3-4 Devanagari, 3-4 Roman.

Hey! Only the test subject gets to see and say what it is!
Kids in the back! Those who know, keep silent! When the last one the tiny boy in front answers, then behind him you can raise your hand if you recognize the letters.

Assessment Results:

All those who claim literacy, spoke a valid name for all test items correctly, or expressed repressed excitement that they know the answer. Oo! ooo!! Mee, me! indicates that they know, and they know they know. I didn't have to test that kid for that item, in the matter of literacy. In fact:

All those who claim illiteracy, got zero, except for one lady Mom, who claimed illiteracy:

• who said /ullu/ for Devanagari /uu/
  ("Owl":/ullu/ is canonical for a short /u/ vowel, meaning that she got it wrong but almost right, meaning, perhaps, that she picked it up watching the kids or somehow but not from school nor "correctly")
  and she said /imlii/ (which is garlic, canonical for short /i/ vowel), short i.
  she could not say what is Devanagari /kh/ or /n/ or /b/.

  Further, her Roman recognition was zero, saying cursive "a" is zero with a tail, no answer for "t", "s", "g", "i".
  So that was not much literacy while claiming illiteracy.

  My and Pratibha's judgement: illiterate.

Fisher's Exact Test on the following data yields P < 0.00476:

Footnote: Mom here got the first page upside down and immediately flipped the paper around; everyone after her followed suit whether they knew why or not. If that is a pattern and Mom is illiterate as we judge, then page rotation may be ambiguous as to illiteracy -- while failure to rotate remains an unambiguous indicator of illiteracy. That is, if they do rotate it, that doesn't mean they are literate since they could rotate it for other reasons like orienting the heads up on the page. But if they do NOT rotate it, then it does mean that they are illiterate.

Gurjar Teaching: 1 with 11.

Some parts were video recorded. These bits may become shared later. Video is needed to document the process but hard to do by myself. I think I should ask and teach Chanchal our driver to be cameraman.

Teaching the Gurjars, who turned out to not be Gurjars but actually Khari Boli speakers who live in that particular settlement, followed the plan, and seemed generally effective.

It is a talk about voicing, place, and action.

First, Voicing: explain silence [/-] (chhup hona), then voice [+/] (aavaaz), then breath [h] (saans).

This is pretty easy, everyone gets it. Second: Vowels and Consonants: I skipped this with the Gurjars, but remembered it with the housecleaner; my explanation of what is a vowel and what is a consonant, she nodded her head more helpfully than comprehendingly.

To present C vs V, I would need to prepare properly: Write the explanation of the difference between V vs C carefully and concisely, translate it perfectly -- or skip it! Havingt them separately on two sides of the paper are enough explanation. Let's skip C vs V unless it comes up spontaneously as helpful.

Third: [a] is mouth open plus voice. So open the mouth wide (embarrassed, who will do that outside the doctor's office!!; allow her to cover her mouth, or look away for privacy, but still please open the mouth. Alternatively, the teacher might volunteer to do it for her.) Then make the voice sound. Without voice there is no [a]. With voice, open mouth gives [a]. Did I teach it or did the drawings tell you what to do? Most people get a light in their eyes, wow.

[a:]. This short box is less, that long box is more, [a] is less, [a:] is more. (Hindi explanations can go on about this if you have time.)

(I may remove [a] because in Devanagari goes to [ə] which is a separate item.)

Pause the rest of the vowels and flip to the Consonant page. Explain place and action. Any action happens in any place, with or without voicing (metaphor: like an audience cheering?)

Places are five -- point out the column headings.

Actions are 6 -- point out the row headings.

For place, if in person or on video, use audio examples of velars versus palatals to explain the difference, and say how the drawing refers to that difference.

To explain place of articulation, use audio examples of burst-only without vowel or voicing. Put the finger on each box as you go. Then test, ask to put finger on the correct place column when you do each place's burst stop-release. Second test, put your finger, make them produce the right burst sound. (Because humans are phoneticians, not limited by the usual associations of phonologists! They can separate out the burst from the whole realization of the phoneme.)

(This exercise is especially to get the velar and palatal places of articulation since those are a long finger down the throat.)

Say, I will show one place and one action, you learn other places other actions.

First action is called NASAL. The action is: closed at a place in mouth, noseway open. How opened? Not closed. How do you close it? Pinch it off. Try it, see that [mmmmm?] stops when the nose is pinched off. You cannot make a nasal when the nose is blocked. So Nose open. Nasal. That is the action.

First place is lips. Do the nasal action at lips. [m]. At teeth: [n]. behind teeth [N], at palate: [ny], at velum: [ng].

(At this point, doing [n], with a lot of talk about the nose and the teeth and the voice, one of the ladies got the I'm-confused look in her eyes. She seemed to think, I don't get it, I can't get it, I won't get it, just try to convince me. So I did [nanananana] and she laughed, and I got her on the track a little bit again.)

It has to be gently explained.

We did one place one action: nasal at lips [m].

Other places and actions are your puzzle to remember later. Here is the hint, use dental/retroflex for t, s, flap, approximant, lateral. Teacher does it, student picks the row. Teacher picks the row, student does it. Does the drawing help you to remember?

Great.

After this bare introduction, I don't have time to teach every one, but now each can figure out the sound for each one.

As in-person teachers, we have the option to say, "n" is [n], and their phonology tells them the answer.

Without a teacher, the puzzle is deeper but one can teach the other.

Students took the lesson that this is a path, and you need to keep stepping forward, and after 1-2-3 months THEN they will be able to do this.

I asked: Any questions?

Teenaged water-buffalo girl said, Can you teach us English? I hemmed and hawed. What I have given gives English signs and maps and directions, and this is the beginning of English. First, use it to write your own language. Also read signs and directions and receipts and product labels. Full English only begins here. Still I will think about it.

She has called for an English curriculum from scratch and without L1 dependencies.

Good. I learned more, I'm sure, but it's time for bed before going to the mountains tomorrow, and the high mountains after that.

On the way: warm hat, more copies, more pencils and notebooks.

Teaching 1 on1

She was cooperative enough to give answers with a straight face but she answered something random for every letter, 4 Devanagari and 4 Roman, in my test cards. I suppose it is hard to speak to some crazy foreigner and say I have no idea. No problem, she is perfect, she did flip the paper around, but I said to Pratibha she is our perfect target audience. Ma'am, can we try this? Pratibha answers, of course, sit down, let's do it.

Pratibha is a force of nature.

• First, Pratibha gives the motivation speech. Pratibha is the most creative, has the best expression, performance, engaged interaction, the best work on this, and I need to translate her recorded speech which is so powerful. A couple reminders, travel, transactions, message, the result is a compelling essay on the problems of the illiterate person. M agrees, for shame the exploitation! So M is motivated. Pratibha is done, my turn.

• IPA vs English. I use my name [vic] vs "Veatch", three sounds six pointless letters, English is not the same as the sounds. We start with the sounds.

• I stopped after [a] to suggest she try to write [a] a few times:

  Physical-skill-training elements: How to hold the pencil, keep the symbol aligned to the baseline, show the stroke direction and sequence.

  Cognitive-skill-training elements: Write it, and repeat it out loud, 30x, or until comfortable judging that I know this curve means this sound.

• Vowels vs consonants: that's hard to explain. I'll skip it henceforth.

February 10, 2025: Srinagar Garhwali Report

So today I have done one great thing and now I have three goals.

The great thing was that Chanchal drove me 3-4 hours from Dehra Duun to Srinagar Garhwali and I got to meet the schoolchildren and teachers at the school where Maadhuri teaches. All in five rows, they stood to sing the National Anthem, Rashtrikaan.

Somehow it was a big deal that I was there with Maadhuri and Chanchal, so they made me address the crowd. In Hindi of course. I spoke slowly and like an idiot, but with enthusiasm. I said I am here to develop basic literacy for the illiterate people. I showed them The Instrument, and talked about it a bit. Place of articulation is not the best thing to start with; I should have started with voicing. But they were very nice.

Then I said, when you know something, you can teach it.

I said again, everyone is looking up, climbing up, go to university go to graduate school go to Delhi go to London go to America, up up up. Who looks behind? Who looks below? People are there, and if you know you can teach. So look around, see who is there, grab them, drag them, be loving, be respectful, find out what is their next step, please teach them what you know. With knowledge you also have permission, authority, and responsibility, so give to others.

That was nice. The principal took the mic and explained it all again understandably, much more nicely. Then it was time for pictures. I said, even if you are old you can still be young, and I hopped on my toes.

Then it was time to see the math class. I drew my favorite proof of Pythagoras, two squares with a+b making each side, then four abc triangles in the corners, four making two rectangles, all similar all same-size, then this square is a^2, that square is b^2, is it equal to this c^2? Yes. (I failed to say, for any a and for any b? Yes. And what is c? c is the square root of c^2, it is the side of this square. No, not really, I did not get that far.) But the teacher came to me and shook my hand, said that was a great proof. Fun.

Then it was time to leave, go for chai and breakfast which Neeraj was making in his house overlooking the Srinagar valley, a breathtaking view of the Ganges, a university, everything. In the street whatever you see is a wall of stores and signs and stuff and vehicles on either side, you can barely see out. Stop, go out, climb up and up to Neeraj's house's roof's front edge and you are flying over the greenery and the Alaknanda river which becomes itself the Ganges not merging into the Ganges but when Bhagirathi joins it at Devprayag they become Ganga. Anyway it's quite breathtaking.

Arriving home after the school visit, Neeraj introduced me to his conference co-organizer Hem Pant, who asked me to make an invitation video for the conference. Apparently Hindi speaking firangis are something else. A good cause, so maybe you'll find my face on the internet somewhere.

Turns out the National Service Union has it in for this conference. What could be illegal or impermissible about a book fair? Yet someone some levels up in the Rashtriya Sevak Sangh has made approval impossible, where I thought approval couldn't possibly even be required. He has to call 250 literary figures and interested professors and everyone and say, No, it has been postponed; this being not the first time. What a pit of corruption!

But it's not my karma, tomorrow I'm off to Jyotirmath, the first center of higher learning established by the original Shankar, we say Adi Shankaracharya, Adi because he was the first and set it up so that after him there was a line of Shankaracharyas and Archarya because of course he was a Teacher.

February 11, 2025: on to Joshimath

First, we're off to my second school in Srinagar (Garhwali!), a primary school with Maadhuri. Such adorable kids! My words were less about literacy, rather lifelong learning, and that if you know you can teach, and you are our hope of the future.

I'm just delighted to meet children, wow.

Then Boom, 10am, off to Joshimath with Chanchal, Pratibha's wonderful driver. 3pm, arrival, lots of sharp edges and yawning chasms, but I never felt unsafe. Thank you Chanchal!

Time to meet our next host, Neeraj-ji's friend Professor Charan Singh Kedaarkandi, who teaches English literature at the graduate school in Joshimath. Wonderful. First, over chai, he grabbed two students in their uniforms in the chai shop and made me explain it to them; then he could watch at a comfortable level. Such a sweatheart AND a very thoughtful intellectual and wise teacher at the same time, his dissertation was on an epic poem in English by Sri Aurobindo. After the chai shop tutorial, he knew exactly what we're talking about. He said, later, phonetics is very interesting but very rarely taught in India. Yes, the more valuable it is to do now, then.

Next, Charan Singh toured us through the actual Math, had us sit for a nice Hindi chat with the actual modern-day current Shankaracharya. Every place with its Guru has its Guru's energy and Adi Shankar's is very blessed. So gentle, so clear, really not hot, but somehow the sense of separate self melted away, and I thought, I hope I can keep this amazing state of being. It's not something you can do, exactly, it seems.

February 12, 2025: Ringi Village Report

Today we met at 12, and from Jyoshimath past Tapovan before Bhavishya Badrinath Temple is Ringi Village. Lots of cows and people. Professor Charan Singh is personal friends with people in this possibly ancient village, which seems strangely safe from earthquakes and glacier collapses. On a ridge to the side of the rockfall and glacier fall, it's safer than elsewhere. The roofs are large flat random-shape hand-cut 3cm thick stone slabs

Up the hill at the top of the village, the whole town is having a religious festival: we came at the right time! The men ate together, the women and children separately. We waited in the room of honor, emerged after eating was done, to have a chat with about 24 men. Professor Charan Singh gave another lovely gentle clear and motivation introduction, which got everyone ready to pay attention and cooperatively learn. Then it was my turn.

Struggling to spontaneously produce a verbal preintroduction to a paper-only approach, I gave up, and made a little game, first giving everyone a paper to look at, and then a fun group project: Everyone gets one job, to remember only one sound and letter. That was really the trick!

Everyone agrees they can remember a single letter and its sound.

I go around pronouncing each one clearly, others pronounce it also, they see which letter it is. It's convenient to explain voice, place, and manner after making the sounds the features describe. Everyone understood their sound; we spelled "baba" and "mandir" each by speaking it very very slowly, imagining writing left to right, and asking the owner of each respective sound to say which letter on the page was being called for. It worked, at some level. I suggested fancifully that with the group all together they could write anything. Slightly less fancifully, that each could teach all the others their letter, and that each could learn all the letters from all the others. That the paper and drawings are to help remember.

Conceptual progress today:

• Experiments are difficult, time-consuming, error-prone for one person. Already I made such a huge error, failing to do a pre-test on each person, so that learning can be measured. Can I share the load?

• Maybe my job is actually Teacher-Teacher Training. Yes! I'm now reorienting around this new goal.
  So yes, indeed, I hope to train some Teacher-Teachers. They can train both Teachers and Teacher-Teachers, and all can teach Learners. Then it can spread by itself virally among Teachers. It seems that this is perhaps subtle influence from Adi Shankaracharya, who made four "seats" in the corners of India each to have a Teacher-Teacher to take on the job of teaching the next generation but also teaching the next Teacher.

• Curriculum here.

• If the drawings are to aid in memory, that is a new conceptualization. Teaching becomes foregrounding the sounds and fingering the chart (which we can do because now we are in person), and backgrounding what will help them remember each one later, because there are line-drawings to help identify it.

• Obviously, but it is a new and kind of messianic statement, I've been too humble to express before: My goal is that everyone be literate. Retaining humility is a task, but the reason I've come to this is in the struggle to explain the purpose, and the simplicity of the claim is so stark and reasonable that listeners seem to understand the purpose easily and get on board with the purpose almost independently.

February 13, 2025

Meeting the Professor as well as the Principal and the Administrator, at this sweet little school we had chai twice, met with the administration twice and with 150 students once, had a nice lecture on the IPA and much laughter regarding the labiodental fricatives of English.

I think I want to be an elementary school teacher -- I have found my audience! With such young children I discovered such mutual good feeling and engagement, I feel very grateful and satisfied.

150 kids were sitting in lines of 10 on mattresses all in uniforms at this "public" (meaning, private) school near Narsingh Mandir in Joshimutt. Charan Singh gives the best introductions. Everyone was interested before I said a word!

He told me, make it fun, I know you will do magic! Just tell them that they can succeed even though here they are at the last farthest most isolated edge of the known universe. Tell them something inspirational. I didn't know what to say so I told them my American academic story. I should have told them about wikipedia and Jordan Peterson's essay writing instructions. Anyway time passed in a blink and fortunately I had a pile of pens for the future students and I could give some away. The teachers were wonderful ladies, no chance to talk, and the administration curious, serious, responsible.

Here is a report of some lessons from the day:

• 1: person to person or better yet person to group teaching goes quickly and easily when pointing at the chart and sounding each sound, demanding the student(s) also say them out with me. They get it instantly and correctly. though occasional correction is needed, like a [t] for [p], so I must remain watchful and ready to intervene quickly.

  Then the line drawings of the actions and the places in the mouth become naturally helpful — they seem immediately understood in contrast groups (like m n ŋ etc); then, they seem to confirm students’ intuitions; and I believe their most important role is to support future memory, when looking back uncertainly, the drawings will clarify memory.

• 2: Everyone denies they know English script but when I try to teach them to sing ABC they join in!! So they actually know it pretty well.

• 3: Test first!! I keep forgetting to test and this is such a terrible mistake. Without test, no diagnosis, no knowledge of what level to teach to! Also I cannot come back later and test later and claim an improvement when I never tested the preexisting conditions.

• 4: In India (but everywheee not just in India) phonetics is a high, academic, obscure, rarely accessible thing, but actually everyone loves to learn it.

• 5: It is super fun to teach the sounds they don’t know like theta and voiced eth. I need to hold the sound for several seconds till they finally switch from language perception mode (which won’t allow this to be perceived since it is not distinctive in the language) into vocal tract reality or perhaps play perception which allows everyone to do everything. Suddenly they laugh and then they do it with me. Oh it was such fun. Who knew!?!

  I must say that the proof of nasality is also a great party trick. Make an interminable [mmmmmm..] sound, then suddenly close the nose with a thumb-forefinger pinch! The [m] suddenly stops. You cannot make [m] when the nose is shut. Which proves that [m] requires the nose, meaning that the nose MUST be open: nasal.

  After this performance and everyone participating, came more laughter and amazement and perhaps also a bit of thoughtfulness. “Hmm, nasal, ok…”

• 6: For letters of any script, name and sound are different of course but it really helps to emphasize this. The sound of [h] is [h] but the name of the letter is “aitch”. The name of [e] which we call “e” sounds like [i]; on the other hand [i] sounds like [i] but the name of the letter “i” is pronounced [ay] which contains, for you non-phonetic spellers, the sound written in English spelling as “aah”. (This would make perfect sense, probably, after a quick personal introduction to IPA.)

• 7: The goal of Teacher-Teacher training implies three nested packages of information: A, B, C. A is innermost, A is the package that goes to students and with that information they learn to read/write using a phonetic script. B is the next package which includes A plus more information the teacher needs such as providing motivation and materials and practice time and scheduling. C is the last package which includes B (which includes A) and provides more information regarding qualification, selection, and training structure for Teachers themselves. See the Curriculum here; it will evolve as ideas improve.

  My job is to create Teacher-Teachers: to find, qualify, and effectively teach effective Teacher-Teachers, using A, B, and C. Then this thing can spread.

  In the finding aspect, there are people I know directly like Pratibha and perhaps Chanchal. There are linguists like Hariprasad Doley and Paothang Haokip, definitely, perhaps more than, qualified. There is Rakesh Jugran retired principal of the Teacher Training College for Uttaraakhand, who might get me in to teach those teachers-in-training about this, A, B, C.

• 8: A Target Rich Environment. Seems like India has relatively few illiterate people. I think I see illiteracy when I see dusty clothes and short stature (childhood malnutrition). But I really need to test that association empirically. So focussing on the very poor would increase the proportion of people this might actually help. But also there is stratification by Nation. Perhaps I must go to Pakistan or Afghanistan to find a higher proportion of illiterate people. Perhaps to Nepal.

  I must say that here it is somewhat demoralizing, with all the people who deny that there is illiteracy around them, who imagine that anyone illiterate would have no need or desire to become literate, who can't see it and don't really approve and who offer shallow and snippy little negative judgments, oh that will never work. Plus the sociolinguistic complexities, every variable induces another layer of potential and often actual examples suggesting Maybe Not. Garhwalis who read Devanagari but not English are common; what about those who can sing the (Roman) alphabet but cannot fluently read? Sheesh, do I have a handle on this? I just have to remember that, I have found and tested illiterate grown women who are interested and motivated, and I mean tested with flash cards and ekdam don't know what those squiggles are but want to. So even if they are few, they do seem to be findable.

  And grateful.

Already turned to Srinagar, early to bed, we go back to DehraDun tomorrow early.

February 14, 2025

Nothing was done but we woke up at 3:30 and drove down the hill till 9am, then I took a nap till 2, useless and groggy all day still.

But let me report that I met the Joshimath officer of Grameen Bank, which purports to seek out ways to help the poor ladies of the world. Our goals are quite aligned. The officer was quite excited, but he said we must check the head office before he can do anything. Also he believes we have only 10% illiterate women as clients of Grameen Bank. Still, they work in groups and groups share insights and enthusiasm and form a natural pen-pal set for sharing content they produce with each other.

Now since I am back in Dehradun, conveniently there is a Grameen Bank tower in Dehradun which has the Uttaraakhand Grameen Bank District headquarters, so I could potentially find alliance there.

Last let me report Pratibha's no-doubt-wise tactical idea which is one village at a time, after a week or two or a month they will be literate, and then move on to the next, carefully documenting. I do recoil against a process which surely cannot be scaled up, replicated, to solve the world illiteracy problem unless 3000 times by possibly 3000 language-specific Teacher Teams, which seems beyond imagination, though virality could achieve that. Still the need is to have real success, and that may require exploring with feet on the ground long enough to really support whatever is needed, including all the things we don't know about, and all the obstacles, perhaps 1,2,3,5,7 whole villages, only after that do we know we probably have the process generally scoped out and possibly reasonably refined enough for success.

There is a great lesson in Computer Science which is, never Optimise a process you don't understand yet. So putting plenty extra work into one village means discovering what is really needed to make it work. Understand it first. Then optimize it later.

If so this becomes a 1-2 year, 6 months-a-year project with my feet on the ground doing this work.

I had hoped to create a feedback look with responsible rational Teachers or Teacher-Teachers who can do the pre and post tests and report on difficulties and propose adjustments to the protocol, then any number of tests and refinements can potentially be done in parallel by several Teachers and the group work will produce a faster better result than an infinite amount of labor by just little ol' me.

So I'll have to chew on this for a while. Look, we are hardly at the phase of Draft 1.0 of information packages A, B, and C; let's take a breath and give it a minute before architecting a schedule with 12 international flights from Seattle to India, forget Nepal and etc.

February 15, 2025

Twice I have seen welders welding around here without any eye protection, so I'm going to keep these with my passport and cash -- and if I see someone without then I intend to directly interrupt and give them a #10 welding eye shield, without which they will actually become blind while quite young. Welding without eye protection is absolutely injurious, absolutely unacceptable. If their argument is economic, F that, I'm giving it to them free. They can throw it in the trash if they want to ruin their eyes. At 25 rupees the cost is $0.30, there is no justification. After the puppy got its anti-tapeworm infusion, we went to back to Neeraj's brand new house with construction still unfinished upstairs and furniture on the way, congrats Neeraj! He and I went out to meet Rakesh Jugraan, who was coming in his car. On the street were two ladies meeting their daughters coming home from school. I immediately got their attention and Delivered the Instrument. One each. Here's h, saans (breath), here's a u i o e ə, what is [a], see it says open the mouth by showing this arrow on the jaw pointing down, see it says [+] meaning aavaaz (voice), let me show you, two steps, watch me, mouth open first, then without voice there is nothing, again with voice, what comes out [a]. Makes sense? Yes. To the daughter, this makes sense? Yes. a u i o e ə, right? Right. The line drawings say which one, right? Okay. So far it's about 30-60 seconds total elapsed time.

Flip the page, 5 places, 6 actions,

Nose action, m n ɳ ñ ŋ, that is, same action at every place.

Dental place, n d t s z r l, one place, tongue tip behind teeth, allows every action.

What is this? [m]. Why? Lips and nose. Lips are the place, close the lips. Nose is the action, m n ɳ ñ ŋ all have sound through the nose. Lips + nose = [m]. Right?

Every one is here. Forget x, gamma, theta, voiced eth, velarized l, velar flap R, your language doesn't need them.

Okay, makes sense? After one month you can read street signs. If not one month then after one week. Pay attention, practice, draw wit pencil on paper and say each letter, 30 times.

Makes sense? Yes.

Then I addressed the daughter. Is it perfectly clear? Yes. No questions? No. You will help her practice until she reads every sign? Yes.

I gave her a notebook but I'm all out of pens. Oh and tonight the leftover one had failed and poured ink on backpack down jacket, shirt, and jeans, aargh! Even soap and elbow grease didn't remove it all.

I had only thirty more steps walking with Neeraj, who witnessed the whole thing, and actually interrupted at the beginning to re-explain my purpose to a somewhat shocked and disoriented audience. Walking away, I was a bit ecstatic. I could see, not only the mothers and their daughters there, but also Neeraj as witness was really seeing and understanding it that an intervention could potentially be almost that easy, at least as a beginning, and at least with the support of the schoolchildren to help their parents, and indeed that the it surely seems that recipients are truly understanding the explanation, with support of the drawings.

Without the drawings how can annyone remember 30-40 symbols? The exposure is only that some stranger has pronounced them with finger on page. That would seem to be be quite difficult, so not likely;

But we are not teaching random data, no. We are building on what they already know. If you insert the phoneitcs back into the letter-reading process, then you link it back to what they already know, which is the phonetics that they have been practicing carefully since 8 months of age and performing expertly since maybe 3 years of age. They already know how to say every sound and as illiterates who have not forgotten that they have a mouth, they can refer through the drawing to internal direct self-perception, and their own deep preexisting phonetic knowledge. The drawings link letter reading to previous phonetic knowledge, making learning efficient, and ensuring deep and correct understanding.

Difficult? Not likely? Maybe it would help, if there is time, to do a quick one-on-one show-and-tell process, with 2-3x performances or exposures of each relevant letter, saying with the first, Say after me, then after the second, Which one is this (saying one randomly then quickly myself giving the answer) and now? (this 2nd time, waiting for the answer for at least a moment, watching for frustration and giving the answer BEFORE there is frustration, that is, after a second or two), trying another repetition only if delay is more than 2-5 seconds.

But once you, as the listener, hear each one each one, and you see the mouth positions from the line drawings, then later if you are not sure then the line drawings will jog the memory and also make clear what sound goes with what letter, unambiguously. That is, since you've seen it and heard it, then the drawings are a clear reminder.

Remember that my previous goal was to airdrop paper from the sky without even a word of explanation. Here there is time and personal interaction sufficient for some demonstration and some explanation, to provide the structure of how it works, even if they don't have the details they can get the idea of how to approach it and how to learn.

I didn't tell you about the chai cook's father, and the homeward-walking lady, with whom I had 2-4 minute encounters previously, walking to the hardware shop. Both got the instrument, both got the idea immediately. The chai cook's father seemed to get it, but his son was quite emphatic that he really understood, and that in a week his father would be a reader, and he would help. The heomward-walking woman accepted the letters I pointed out on the adjacent street sign, "Johar", since we had done [h] and [a], say it slow, j o h a r, here is [ha] there is [h] there is [a], do you understand? With frustration, verging on despair she said, "I have two grown sons, neither is married." I said, "Marriage is for the literate, am I wrong?"

She said with great vehemence that I must meet Modiji. Modiji is the current prime ministoer who is overseeing for a decade this great economic efflorescence and transition in India. Of course, I said, I really want to meet him. Help me meet with him!

She said, I don't have his number. I said I will try, somehow someway, yes!

Oh dear, she did tell me her name, Vidya something, but I forget. I really must write down every name!

... My story continues again in the afternoon, walking with Neeraj before meeting Rakesh.

Driving with Rakesh, naturally, it was time for Neeraj to explain to Rakesh just what had happened, and share with him a sense of reality in this opportunity and the potential effectiveness of this approach.

We drove around, saw the Lakshman Mandir, wandered in the forest, talked and talked and talked. We were stuck in immoilized traffic halfway from Majri Grant to downtown on a flyover, once, surrounded by kleenex-package selling upgraded beggars. To the insistent middle aged woman, after offering the Instrument, saying this will teach you to read, she, refusing, she again, saying buy buy buy these tissues, I offered the folded paper again, and since the pressure was coming at me more, I upped the ante, and offered a motivation, saying, reading/writing will change your life. Her response was genius, immortal:

Change your own life.

Getting close to our destination, the famous city library, the Dun Library, I suddenly said, Rakesh, Neeraj, I have a new goal, my goal is creating Teacher-Teachers.

Rakesh equally suddenly volunteered; he said, I'll set up a lecture for you at my Teacher-Teaching school where I am the retired principal. We will do it Monday, which is day after tomorrow. I said, Perfect! I can teach but will there be students? He said, I'm the former principal, of course there will be students. My hands went into the air like the football referee declaring a touchdown. Oh, no, that was after the ladies meeting their daughters coming from school. But with Rakesh at least I felt that way again.

Let's see, we'll see, I cannot get too excited but I am very excited, hopefully, hopefully, I will be able to carry out my promise, anyway at least the phonetics and the science aspect will be useful to any teacher or teacher-teacher, and I will hope to give at least an introduction for potential Teacher-Teachers for this approach to basic which means phonetic literacy. And really this is just what I've been working on writing recently

So, time passed, we saw a bunch of talks praising the famous author of a new book, Mukesh Nautiyal, a friend of both Neeraj and Rakesh, and starting now a friend of mine also, a sensitive and sweet man who I would indeed like to befriend, and I will make the time. Then samosas, sweets, chai, and home. What another amazing day!

Tomorrow: Grameen Bank, write A, B, C; tickets to Delhi and to Seattle, call Shanti Mandir in Kankhal about visiting 17-18, figure out how to organize groups of poor folks to spend an hour together.

Grameen Bank borrower groups? Association with a religious event? Questions, Questions, always questions.

I guess my temporary conclusion for today is, I must review and correct and improve information packages A, B, C, being intended for students, teachers, and teacher-teachers.

May I kindly ask YOU, dear reader, who has been kind enough to read this far, Please will you have a look at that Teacher Curriculum with an eye to critical changes and improvements, so that a new certified graduate of this now-suddenly-coming-into-being BPLTTTP Basic Phonetic Literacy Teacher-Teacher Training Program, when finding themselves in the presence of one to one thousand interested illiterate Students, so that they will be able to motivate and persuade and pre-test and present and teach and test and confirm and monitor and post-test a practical competence in actual phonetic writing and reading knowledge.

Because if we can meet that spec then I think the doorway to heaven is opening for us. It's not about me, it's about you and me, and not just getting the ideas right but getting the approach and the words and the gentle slope of the path upward just right, so that anyone can just pay attention and then say, oh, obviously I almost already knew that, but now I also know that I know that, and I know how to practice and how to explore more and yes I will be soon, or if not soon then eventually, reading anything I want to.

February 17, 2025

District Institute of Educator Training, I think, this is the teacher training college in which the teachers for the tribal schools of the entire state of Uttaraakhand receive their teacher training. With competitive, test-based entry, these are already college graduates now taking a two year teaching degree.

My new friend Rakesh is a God-given resource. If I understand correctly he was the head of the Department of Education previously. And for the last ten years of his career he was the principal in charge of this college intended to teach the teachers of the poorer children of the state.

Driving, he explains to me that the Indian national government has an updated education policy just now since 2020. Although it previously also asserted that students should be taught in their native language through 8th grade, there is now more emphasis on this point.

I shared that Liz began a school based on the constructivist philosophy of Piaget who said Learning is Invention. Self-directed, interest is actually the priority.

He shared that DIET has been writing school primers in the different sub-regional languages of Uttaraakhand such as Garhwali and Kumaoni. They have a PhD linguist on staff, and the government is now actually intending to get more serious about this. He said a child comes in, is understood to speak no Hindi, the teachers have no idea what to do with the child, they continue to teach, the Hindi does not suddenly become comprehensible because they need mother-tongue assistance to leap the first hurdles in school learning, to understand the teacher. Falling quickly farther and farther behind, these children soon become demoralized, and leave school. The teachers wring their hands and say, What can I do?

To this I say, you can teach IPA, and through IPA give mother-tongue self-respect, as well as a universal tool for making sense of all languages. The IPA is close enough to provide imperfect but Very Useful sign-reading ability for English-spelled signage, which is 80% of all signs in Delhi and in Calcutta. To transition from no signs to 80% of signs, or from reading only signs in Devanagari (the other 20%), to reading all signs, could be a big deal for any taxi driver or any person who walks on any road or needs to get off any bus.

A light flashed on in my mind, and I thought, after teaching IPA to schoolchildren who speak all different languages, they could be assigned a homework problem, to go home, decide on one word in their language, to write it with IPA, and to bring it back to share it with the rest of the class. Speaking different languages should be a matter of pride.

Am I not proud that my first language was Thai?

Although my mother hearing my first words in Thai, immediately declared, "Oh My God, he will be retarded!", her fears were imaginary and false. Multiple language learning in very young ages leads to increased intelligence, is my belief. I had to learn Thai and English, from scratch, twice, each, since my family returned to the US twice from Thailand after my 2nd and 4th years. I don't think I ended up mentally damaged.

So minority children can be smarter than single-language children, due to the benefit of learning more than one language In the same way, Hindi speakers who learn English are not mentally damaged by the enrichment.

Rakesh Ji brought me to the school. Chai is obligatory however coffee is accepted also nowadays. I met professors Tina Mohan, Binita Suyaal, Sunita Badoni, later I met Priyanka Tomar, Ritu Kukreti, along with Pranay, Ashutosh, Ashikara and Sunita Ma'am. At the right time they took me upstairs to a classroom of 30 students, all taking master's degrees in Education. Next year they may be teaching in the government schools in tribal areas.

I asked, Who speaks Garhwali? Two raised their hands. Who speaks Kumaoni? One raise their hands, but after some encouragement two more did. Everyone else claims Hindi only Hindi. I asked, Can I speak in English, and insert a little Hindi where I can? Approval, might have been polite.

Then it was IPA time. I talked for 90 minute giving them IPA, IPA teaching, and IPA teacher teaching curriculum. This curriculum should enable the recipient to Learn IPA, to Teach IPA, and to teach Teachers of IPA.

Not every bit of full official IPA detail was included but what matters was given: the idea of one letter for one sound, and a relatively comprehensive inventory of symbols, organized and accessed by the dimensions of voice place manner and tone and the basic vowel features of [open], [front-unrounded], [back-rounded] which combine to make primary vowels [a u i o e ə].

There was some discussion of the Teacher-level tasks and ideas: student motivation, script choice, global strategy (virality), self-funding, and language independence.

In the end it seemed perhaps optimistically that everyone understood. I pronounced them to be Phonetic Literacy Teacher Educators, and encouraged them to use it.

My own examples are street-level encounters with dusty, formerly-malnourished people, giving them a copy of the instrument, a practice notebook and pen, and carefully performing the Entry Dance, subject to time constraint.

The Entry Dance is to show the pathway to acquire literacy. It should be written, edited for brevity and impact, choreographed and practiced.

The cognitive pathway steps (supported by the Instrument) are: head, breathway, silence [-], voice [+], breath [h], then at once [auioe ə] with echo, then [a] and its associated drawings of voice and mouth-openness, then write [haha]. (That may be enough, testing is needed.)

Just giving paper pencil and Instrument might possibly be enough for a smart and/or determined person. A motivated mind needs only a spark, a hint of the path, to burn the dark covering that hides the world's knowledge.

(Generally, if an encounter permits more time, explain more.)

Flip the paper over, finger on each place, do voiceless bursts for [p t T C k], All same Action, burst, all different places. Then [m n ɳ ñ ŋ]. (If time, do the Nasality Proof: mmmmm, then pinch the nose, mm stops. So nasals need the nose.) Then fricatives: you don't need this f,v,x,gamma, and this and this. You need s, sh, z, zh. (For teacher-teachers or children willing to play with it, teach theta, voiced eth, x, gamma.). Then more vowels. Vowel length. Vowel Features, [i] and [u], then combined vowel features, [i+a=e] and [u+a=o]. Diphthongs ai, au., write in sequences. Demonstrate and ask to draw a smiley face. Now they can write. Ask to practice saying-and-writing each letter, repeating until comfortable. That is only a few minutes, give shows the path and gives the support for Basic Phonetic Literacy.

Tonight or tomorrow I owe 1500 words to Hariprasad Doley for the Mising Student Association of JNU publication, to be released 23-Feb-2025.

February 18, 2025

Tonight I will be in Haridwar, and tomorrow in Delhi.

Arriving Haridwar, Kankhal neighborood. Swagat Inn has a room for Rs1500, nice room, solar water, wifi, clean. Walked to Shanti Mandir, 1km on Sanyaas Marg. Once a year Gurudev Swami Nityananda of Shanti Mandir comes to Kankhal, he came yesterday for a few days. Dr. Ram Pal Singh asks, "Would you like Darshan?" "If I may have darshan how could I be more happy?" "Please sit here, wait a minute."

Our own Muktananda-named inheritor of the power and authority of his lineage from Bhagavaan Nityaanand through Baba Muktaanand with his sister Gurumayi who runs the Siddha Yoga organization, was sitting with Dr. Ram Pal almost alone in the darshan hall, with Dr. Swami Keshavaanand, a Sanskrit scholar. Gurudev gave me so much time and love and thoughtfulness and wisdom. Thank you Gurudev!

His message to me was the improvement of civilization, the level of learnedness, what a person should learn in school not just technical information but how to be a better person, character.

He asked, What are you doing?

Me: Literacy for the illiterate.

He: What do you mean?

Me: May I show it? Yes.

I took a moment, gave my paper, The Instrument, with notebook and pen, one each to Gurudev Ji, to Swamiji Keshavaanand and to Dr Ram Paal Singh. I performed the Entry Dance: You know this "ऊ", you know this "t", so you don't need it, but those who need it, need it very badly and even their children and grandchildren will be illiterate without this. Here is the way I share it.

Look, here is the head, here the breath, here the voice, now you know the letter for [h], its name is "aitch" but the sound is [h]. This mark says voice, this mark says voiceless, see the voice mark is on every line, here here here, front and back. Here the line-drawing says, open mouth, and the voice mark says, voice. I'll do it for you, watch me, [open], but nothing happens, why? I didn't give the voice! I do both, what happens? [a]. And this letter is? [a]! In the ABC song its name is "a", but the sound is [a] ("aaah"). Now they can write haha, slowly [haha:] [hhh a:a: hhh a:a:] then write h a h a. Then read h a h a, say faster haha. So they can already write and read, if only with [h] and [a].

Next these are a u i o e ə, these (see the short black box) are short, those (see the long black box) are long [a a: u u: i i: o o: e e: ə], [ə] is always short. Right? (Wait for reply: Right). How to write [au]? [a] then [u].

Page Over, we have 5 places 6 actions. One place has many actions, one action has many places.

Take one action, nasal, I'll do all places [m n ɳ ñ ŋ]. For each place one drawing, here the lips, here behind the teeth, further behind teeth (Panini says murdhana), then palatal or talu/taalavya, then velar or komal taalu.

Take one place, I'll do many actions: [n d t z s r l] What actions? At one place, touch behind teeth, make nasal: n, stop: d/t, fricative: s/z, flap: r, lateral: l.

This, anyone can understand, even to five years old.

Gurudev listened carefully, understood.

Today I gave it to five sugar-cane cutters. I explained it to the blanket-seller walking curiously to me waiting for Uber in Majri Grant near Dehradun, he got it, didn't recognize "t", watched with rapt attention, fully got everything, monolingual Hindi conversation. I took his notebook and said, Draw a smiley face (कलम से चित्र बनाएं), and gave the example, then he drew it, a bit flat, with circles for eyes, but a definite smiley face, I said that's great! Now you can draw, so draw letters and practice and keep it and practice in one week you can read and write English-like phonetic script (Angrez-waali dhvani-waali lipi), read the signs, learn and learn. The world is yours.

Yesterday I gave a 90 minutes lecture to the master's level teacher-education students who will be teaching at the government schools in the tribal areas in Uttaraakhand on: A) phonetic alphabet, B) teaching phonetic alphabet, C) teaching teachers of a phonetic alphabet, and at the end I pronounced them qualified Teacher-Teachers of this Phonetic Alphabet.

A student who learns a phonetic alphabet and starts writing with 1 sound 1 letter, immediately gets the complete idea of writing more complicated scripts like Devanagari and English.

Swami Keshavaanand interrupted, Sanskrit aspirated consonants are Strong (A search of Panini at sanskritdictionary.org/panini has empty results for strong consonant, consonant strength, fortis) and demonstrated with examples how the voiced aspirated bha, dha, Dha, gha are pronounced more forcefully as compared with others. On one hand I don't remember strength being mentioned in Sanskrit class or in phonetics graduate school even from Lisker whose studies of Korean fortis/lenis ("strong"/"weak") contrasts were part of his, and now the widely accepted, "Voice Onset Time" based phonetic classification of stop consonant voicing. But yes, voiced aspirates require vocal cord vibration AND aspiration at the same time, which requires a stronger minimum airflow, a difference especially noticeable to beginning learners of Sanskrit, Hindi, and related languages. That doesn't mean aspiration is absent, but strength is also present, true, and thank you.

I'm actually quite happy to encounter a Sanskritist since I've been struggling with how to translate "velar", the name of the last column of my consonant chart. Some call it "guttural", but that's another English term. Somewhere I heard "velar" and "glottal" may be translated as ka~Th or kaa~Th but I couldn't capture which is which. So I asked Keshavaanand, what is the term for "velar" in Sanskritic academia, because कंठ / ka~Th means Throat and कांठ means Larynx or Waist, while taalu means palatal, which means hard or bony palate as in [ny,sh,zh,j,jh,c,ch] and not velar as in [ng,k,kh,g,gh]. So what is "velar" in Panini?

To this Swamiji gave more examples of forcefulness of consonants. Then he was careful to explain, see this boy really knows nothing at all, speaking in Hindi, supposing, I assume, that I couldn't understand him. Nice fellow. Maybe I misunderstood? Or perhaps he felt threatened on behalf of the Devanagari Nationalists that hate seeing English spelling on 80% of the signs in town, or on behalf of his status as expert in linguistic/Sanskritic matters, or perhaps after I slipped into English when I couldn't find the expression, because I had inadvertently excluded him from the conversation. There could be many reasons, and I don't have to take it personally. It's really fine, and it's also a nice excuse to do linguistics and Paninian research. Linguists love a good linguistic argument, and best of all to be clear and wrong and proven so in argument, because then there is PROGRESS.

But it might have been uncomfortable for a Sanskritist to encounter a question about velarity because not just from the vacuum in my memory but also after some search, I see no term in Sanskrit for velar, indeed Panini's own Shiva Sutras are provably incapable of expressing "velar" as a single concept, since /ng ə,gh ə, g ə, kh ə, k ə/ are respectively the first or second-from-first aksharas/letters in the separate lines numbered 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the Shiva Sutras. The Paninian method of declaring a phonological category is by implied enumeration: First, specify the first and last symbols in this 14-line listing of letters. Then, enumerate all the consecutive letters between those endpoints, including the first and excluding the last. No matter which is first or which is last, no consecutive sequence of letters are all the velars, since they are not consecutive; instead they are in different lines of the Shiva Sutras unrelated to one another, many other non-velar letters come between them. Therefore the category of velars must be enumerated explicitly, for example, "velars are /k ə, kh ə, g ə, gh ə, engma ə/". But then the phonetic basis is lost; the point being that they share a place of articulation, we call it the velum or soft palate, which enables early learners can feel for the place while doing the different consonant actions and get the right thing.

My, that detour was certainly fun for a phonetician and linguist and Sanskritist; however limited my paltry knowledge, it is interesting to think about and learn more about.

While touching on the personal-prestige issues of authority and expertise in matters of Sanskrit grammar, may I mention something shocking? A miracle of modern technology, the website sanskritdictionary.com/panini with its keyword searches, enables any idiot who never even memorized the 4000 verses of Panini's grammar to extract every single mention of a term, as I did when writing my contribution to Sanskrit class last term, a talk on "accent" in Sanskrit. I just searched for "accent", and wrote my (paper, exhaustively covering everything Panini had to say about it. Suddenly I am the expert, only because of Sanskritdictionary.org/panini.

Fun detail: Sanskrit accent is a phenomenon central in the creation of modern linguistics when Ferdinand de Saussure studied it in the late 1800's. When he saw that one set of cognate pairs in Lithuanian distinguished by Lithuanian accent were the same list of pairs as the list of cognate pairs in Sanskrit which are distinguished by vowel length, he freaked out.

The world freaked out. He would have to imagine a thingy, some unknown thingy, something in the pronunciation system that must have somehow been in the protolanguage, in one of the pair, in each of those cognate pairs in their proto-form, and not in the other of that pair. Does it make sense? The thingy, whatever it was, and all we can do is imagine what it may have been, it was a difference that made a difference. A difference that makes a difference is a difference that is real. That is the basic insight of theoretical linguistics.

I find that to be pretty fun.

Now Swami Keshavaanand is correct in that making breathy-voice requires extra air-pressure and lung power to generate two sound sources, both breathiness and vocal cord vibration. Do you want to call it force instead of aspiration, when it is both and you can call it either? As long as I can use some notation for it, and [h] or [h] and [hooked h] are traditional in phonetics, and [h] is obviously present in the voiceless aspirated stops [ph th Th chh kh], so economy says re-use [h]. Phonetically some finer details may be lost in making this chart; neither have I included [#596] or [ae], or some other distinctions. Hopefully it is good enough, the best balance of coverage and simplicity for accessibility.

My oh my, I'm ready to move along; are you?

After discussion I asked Gurudev could I do him any service, any seva. He said, What you are already doing is amazing, only don't forget to include the love. Further: This is exactly what we are doing. (Shanti Mandir has its own Sanskrit college and other teaching programs in Gujarat and elsewhere.) I cannot exactly quote him but my gist is that in his efforts he is in a way trying to raise the level of each person, our family, our country. It is what is supposed to be taught in school, but is not in the technical knowledge, perhaps the word might be "shikshita", being learned, or perhaps more civilized, or more generous, kind, compassionate, virtuous, large-hearted. Less jealous, envious, greedy, petty. Let's raise our level. I take the point. The first two practice-reading words will be "baba" and "prem" (father and love). And the teacher curriculum, first step for the teachers, is to love and respect the students, and in detail what that means.

Henceforth this work may be considered as Guruseva, divine selfless service. Thank you Gurudev for this gift. Sort of upgraded my attitude to this thing, what is it? I'm told I'm like a missionary. Okay, a missionary, working with the hope that all may have the opportunity to become literate in some way. I'm okay with that.

May I describe the ashram, Shanti Mandir in Haridwar? It is on Sanyaas Maarg, along a very long line of ashrams. Everyone I met, they are all quality people, sincere, educated, kind and curious, respectful and respectable. I'll say some more below.

Back at the hotel around 9, I had promised 1500 words to Hariprasad Doley for the Mising Students publication, delivered to Hariprasad tonight, around midnight. It is the best, most concise statement of this program so far. Please order a copy.

February 19, 2025

The essence of the ashram is the ashram schedule which everyone follows. There are plenty of hours for service and for some work outside, and a lot of time for many chants, all the traditional ones even Upanishad Mantras, plus a couple I did not recognize, one weaving verses around the word Shaanti (peace), and another with that deep sonority and rhythm of the Brahmins around the sacrificial fire. I was so happy in the morning when they broke out in the Shiva Arati, which is rarely sung in the west, and at another time in the Nityananda Arati, which I have never heard outside Bhagavaan Nityananda's temple in Ganeshpuri, except singing a capella with the great Sadiki Maharaj while cooking in the Philadelphia Ashram in the late 1980's. These are songs of unfolding devotion, and the love and delight flows for me in them.

Yes, the strict, full schedule is really the heart of the ashram. Anyone who wants to go into that warm bath of inward work in the supporting environment of food and practice and life automatically on time, a place to primarily focus on spiritual practice, might consider Shanti Mandir, which is very close in spirit and history to Siddha Yoga; but Siddha Yoga makes access to the ashram schedule a bit more difficult. Drive up to the South Fallsburg ashram, they won't let you in without an appointment and some departmental order for volunteer work preapproved. You can meet the security officer, that's all.

So let me just point out that if you sincerely want a period of a monastic lifestyle, for a short or long time, Sanyaas Road in Haridwar is welcoming you to Shanti Mandir.

Forgive this wandering, from Panini to Ashram Dharma. Back to Work!

Now, at that particular moment, late morning, I am almost spent from the last print/copy run of 300 copies. Time for more; I might meet someone on the road! Naveen said, go to this shop, to a certain shop.

I went there, they said we are out of paper, Go to Kankhal Chowk, the photostat shop there will help you better. No problem, here take this copy, and give it to some illiterate people if you encounter any.

Thus began the Walk to the Chowk, a real Happening, if I may say, divinity showed its face to me on the Walk to the Chowk.

From the first copy shop, I walked half a kilometer, one lane, no intersections, pink and orange ashram walls and doors, no river view, bright sun, not very hot yet. Then, I saw two skinny lads shovelling sand onto basins to put on their heads and carry into the construction work behind a gate. I approached and said, Angrezi lipi aati? (Can you read English writing?) Nahin (no). Perfect; here! Off comes the backpack, zip goes the zipper, out comes paper, notebook, pen, X2. The Entry Dance ensues, they raptly followed and evidently understood [voice], [voiceless], [aspiration], [h]; they recognized`the voicing mark [/+] on all the rows, they understood those are all voiced, they understood [open], [a], [a u i o e ə], [length], they got the idea of place vs action, 5 columns for 5 places, 6 actions for 6 actions, they got [m n ɳ ñ ŋ] they got the pinched nose proof of nasality.

Out from the construction gate ambles an older gent, same class but 40 not 20 years old. What's this? Angrezi lipi aati? Nahin. He gets a set, and a review, and he's getting it, too.

Suddenly out strides an angry man, kaamchor! (work-leaver: Lazy!) I turn, focus on him, My fault, so sorry, I interrupted them, it was me not them, please forgive me, here take this paper, take the notebook take the pen, see here the head, the breath, the voice, the nothing we call voiceless, see [h] is breath, [h], write [h] like this h. See this voice symbol [/+] this says make voice; see this arrow it says open mouth; watch me (enormous crazy white guy who somehow speaks some bad Hindi like he's from Kashmir or something, it's a spectacle, what can he do, he is forced to watch): mouth open, nothing. Why? No voice? Watch again: mouth open, brief voice, longer voice, long voice, makes [a] [a:], [a::::]. This akshar (letter) is [a]. These, a u i o e ə, short here, long here. Turn the page, here are [m n ɳ ñ ŋ], 5 places 6 actions. I'm in a hurry, I stop there. Keep it, practice it, the boys understand and they will help. Give it to others! He was quite suspicious but he was paying attention and he was getting it, anyway.

I walk on.

Only a few steps farther, an amazing sight, here is a long ashram, here the street separated by a long curb, on the curb 30 sadhus sit wearing orange and every kind of sadhu clothing. I felt they had been watching me talk and give things to the workers, so what about me?, they seemed to express in their body language.

Angrezi lipi aati? Nahin. Chaahiye? (Do you want it?), Thiik (great) Lo (take this). Next fellow, same, next, same, next, same. #5 says No I don't want it.

I will call it Devanagari Nationalism that doesn't want to allow that English writing exists in the public spheres, for example on signage which is only 20% Devanagari. A certain view is confused thinking that script is the same as language. But one sign says "Prince Chowk" in both Devanagari and English scripts, and "prince" is English and "chowk" is Hindi; both languages both scripts. Americans chant Guru Gita written in English script. Script doesn't control language, any script can write any language, more or less. But since Devanagari Nationalists controlled the decision-making in the government school curriculum, now those kids come out with high school degrees knowing not a letter of the Roman Alphabet. How else did the taxi driver hold the paper upside down? In schools where fees are charged, they at least learn to sing the ABC song. But can I really say that government school graduates cannot recognize right-side-up from up-side-down English text? I will try to prove and document that if a chance arises.

At the moment, the sadhus are in a long line sitting on a curb on Sanyaas Marg, lunch guy is walking this way with a pail of rice, me walking that way with a stack of Literacy Instruments. Both saying, "chaahiye, chaahiye, chaahiye?" and giving, giving giving. Some say No.

No is a great answer, no problem, not for you, I don't mind. But I'm curious, What proportion refuses? Sadhus must be the great reserve of Devanagari Nationalists, their intellectual life is Vedas Upanishads Gitas, the ancient and great wisdom, written for a thousand years in Devanagari, now that Brahmi is out of style. If the utterances of the Gods are written in Devanagari, who needs English street-signs? This is the kind of attitude. It is as if one loses something by adopting an additional script, which can also write even your own language. Did Brahmi script writers really lose something by adopting Devanagari? No, everything can be written in either.

My point, here, is a number. Out of 30, 5 said No. 25 said yes. So 1/6 = 17% wanted no part of any Roman alphabet (possibly they already knew it!), but 25/30=5/6=83% did want it. This is just one small statistical sample, but clearly, Devanagari Nationalism is under heavy pressure today in India. Everyone is hungry for English, the language of ambition, technology, commerce, the future.

That's my point.

So I walk on, walking, walking, a long time for sedentary me. THe sun is getting hot. Suddenly a motorcycle comes up right behind me, Get on. It is the angry supervisor, himself! He has come to give me a ride to Kankhal Chowk, another kilometer or two way down Sanyaas Maarg. I said, you have done the Lord's service, as I am trying to do. Thank you.

That was the Walk to the Chowk. Minds and hearts expanded, mine certainly did, I think his did too.

Upon return, more serendipities. Arun Guptaa is going to Delhi, he can give you a ride. I have been worrying about bus and train tickets, the ICRTC isn't making it easy for me to buy a ticket. Instead, I get 4 hours with Arun, chauffeured along new-and-improving highways from Haridwar to Delhi. Curious: and what a great career he has had! From a modest background, an engineering degree, he worked his way up in technical roles in power generation, then in building gas turbine power plants, then rescuing a loss-making state-owned transformer manufacturing business in Kerala, then the full responsibility for building 3 urea-fertilizer chemical plants that took India from 100's of millions of tons of urea exports to zero between 2015 and 2022. In an agriculture dependent nation such as India, to revolutionize the whole fertilizer ecosystem is an enormous lifetime achievement. Arun persuaded me that Modi and also the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi, are indeed responsible and positive forces in the country. "It was Modi's hand on my head that allowed me" to do it all, including to put the goondas (mafia) in jail which were threatening these plants. So now I'm a Modi fan.

Arriving Delhi, a nice metro ride the metro is nice, not expensive, a brightly dressed toddler from a wedding leaning on my shin; a young fellow leaning on my luggage kept it from rolling away when the brakes slowed down the train. There is life here!

Nikhil's father Pitaji Kapaahi has invited me to stay five days in Dilli. Here I am writing and sleeping and walking around the dusty noisy busy city. The drums and horns last night, that was a wedding march. I think some photographer captured me dancing on the balcony with the people on the street.

February 20, 2025

Did I mention, how boring this whole project can seem to be ? All us perfectly literate people cannot imagine this being any kind of issue. We learned it in a childhood so long ago we can barely remember. Why all this talk and enthusiasm and emotion and SLE drivel about fricking the boringest thing in the world, basic basic literacy? I mean, thinking about ABC's, when a person is approaching retirement, gives one a headache.

But no, O bored one, No! And Why? Because if some OTHER person happens to actually not have it (and I know you can't imagine that anyone could fail to have it, but flash the card and see if they don't shrug! They do not have it, and when they don't have it, they really really don't have it and they can never ever get it after generations. Whole worlds go dark.

In a kind of similar way to basic literacy, mathematics is also a blocking subject, you can't just proceed without knowing and bluster on, you can hardly proceed without a teacher to explain it in person. But at least math uses logic, so some geniuses could figure it out again, maybe, sometimes. But spelling is completely arbitrary convention. This squiggle could perfectly well have been that squiggle, there's no relationship between a letter and its sound, except that people agreed to have this particular one signify that particular one. Maybe someone once said, so everyone followed. But there's no basis for guessing, there's no sense, no logic, it's Arbitrary; it's what linguists call, Convention.

It's like a dark screen that covers all the knowledge of the world. It's like a black magic preventing everyone from accessing all the knowledge, excepting only if they do happen to know the magic, like you dear reader. Although it is a means of expression, it is also a means of exclusion. Without the knowledge of each sound's conventional writing-form, you are excluded. And I don't mean a little bit. Every step on the road gives you another unreadable sign, it is basically a STOP sign, your constant awareness is of how you are EXCLUDED from the life of the civilization around you. The motivations of 1) Travel, 2) Messaging, and 3) Transactions may be as intense as indeed they are (because without these you are, respectively 1) Immobilized, 2) Alone, and 3) Easily Vulnerable to Fraud and Abuse). But you are helpless without the helpful arm of a Teacher lifting you over the step. This ever-so-simple, but the impossible, step.

So the educated can barely perceive the existence of any problem here. While the illiterate are painfully aware of every innumerable zone of incomprehension, of inability to defend themselves against fraud and written abuse, of misdirection on the roads to such vulnerability that enslavement in a life of prostitution, inescapable, is among the oh-so-easy outcomes. Just a little work, can we give these people just a little help?

The educated also have lost all awareness of their mouth. Tell them a k is velar, or u is a back vowel, they will stare at you like an Alien. There is some functional cognitive value in remembering only letter forms, or the perceptuals form of sounds, or some crystallized control features driving articulation perhaps but not offering proprioceptive insight, some value in minimizing anatomical self-awareness in the mind of a literate person. We read so much we forget to even be able to perceive our mouths. Not that the activity is slow enough to watch it slowly evolve. Sounds hammer out at maybe 15 in a second, how could you perceive that proprioceptively?

But this means the educated often are unable to agree this is important, ot to agree anyone should have it or would want it, or to agree that line drawings could possibly communicate the letter sounds. The educated even idealistic ones are often quite negative on this project. My Liz says, we'll have to agree to disagree.

Maybe so. But if I can teach the idea of phonetic reading, and writing, and specifically how to read and write haha in 30 seconds, then no, I'm not actually crazy.

February 21, 2025

Pitaji has been very patient. I have been stopping with anyone that looks a little socially downtrodden, and every one seems English-letter illiterate, every one takes it, some in groups (one guy from one group walks away loudly announcing the English Sarkaar (Government) is promulgating English script -- am I some kind of English Government agent? Am I 007, James Bond? Lolol. Dude, it's not English script, it's phonetics script. One sound one letter is phonetics it is not English. Get it straight.)

One boy is tracking me on his bicycle, I've seen him four times looking at me. Here, take this!

The steam pressing lady, waiting for a customer, she gets it. The construction worker lady standing outside the construction site gate, I give it, she is also being watched. I tend to want to give it to the watcher as well as the watched, so they can help each other. Sometimes it is an exploitive relationship.

A cleaning lady, tall, dark, dusty-clothed, is outside a front door in Janakpuri East, this block, taking a short pause, a deep breath in the sunshine. I go right up to her and give the notebook, the Instrument, the pen, I get through [h] and [a], her eyes get it and twinkle in gratitude. Suddenly the door opens behind her, What is this?! The lady of the house is angry. I say here, give her two copies, I do the Entry Dance up through [a]. She interrupts, I know this, dismissing me, may I say, a bit contemptuously. I walk on, wondering what will be the fate of that cleaning lady.

Pitaji says, a homeowner seeing their housecleaner talking with anyone will be very possessive and jealous, thinking you are trying to steal her to work in your house. Finding a housecleaner is very difficult.

I say, suppose you have an illiterate housecleaner, can you send her on errands? No. If she becomes literate, can you write directions and give them to her and she can go there and do your errand even far away on the metro and come back, is that a loss to you that she is literate, or a gain, that you save hours of your own time?

Pitaji says, There is so much exploitation in India, it is like this, each one is jealous that someone else may rise past them. I say, maybe this is revolutionary, okay, maybe so. But we can offer it, people can take their own benefit, and the wise house-owner and business-owner will empower their people to do more by educating them, and then their house and business will only benefit! Just my opinion.

Following Rakesh's suggestion, I try using the word Jaadu, Magic, in the Entry Dance. In this paper the secrets(rahasya), the magic (jaadu) of reading/writing (paRaai-likhaai) which were hidden (gupt) are made visible (dikhaai deti hae~) in the form of line drawings (rekhachitra ke ruup se). Once when I said Magic a child seemed to shiver, and looked afraid. I need to be sure to emphasize that magic is a metaphor, a way of speaking about something real, not actually magic.

I go for a haircut. The guy asks, Shave? I say okay. First time with a straight razor, oh my god my chin feels like a baby's bottom. Sweet! USD$3. I celebrate with a cappucino walking home: USD$2, so creamy.

And that's just a moment ago. I'm finally caught up on Daily Progress Reports.

Next task, fully write out the Entry Dance; Google Translate to Hindi, edit with my poor Hindi, share with Rakesh and Pratibha for a Hindi upgrade.

February 27, 2025

Janakpuri, Paharganj

But now Paharganj. Paharganj is near Ramakrishna Ashram; I went there the other day. Sri Ramakrishna has his own metro station, and it's the very next stop after Rajiv Chowk which is the absolute center of Delhi. (There's nothing like starting early, in real estate!) Nice ashram, walk in, go to the library reputed to welcome people who want to study or write. No, says the doorman, you need to be a member. Walking to the side, someone says, no, there is no office over here to join a membership, talk to that Swami over there. Before I got to him, there's the Ramakrishna Mandir, a large but not vast meditation hall, with statues of Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, and the Mother in the alcove. 11:45, says the smart young fellow at the door, we close at noon, so come out and we'll have a chat. He thinks I'm an interesting person, he say. It's a lovely quiet place to sit against the wall and have a few moments.

Afterwards, Smart Fellow takes me straight to meet the head of the ashram, who understands [h] and [a] as I explain, and when I ask for his blessing gives me a sweet Accept gesture with hand and head. Smart Fellow disappears on an important errand; perhaps we shall meet again.

I am blessed, and this work is blessed. I have a blessing from the actual Shankaracharya in Jyotirmath, I am blessed by Gurudev Swami Nityananda in Hardwar, now I am blessed by the head of the Ramakrishna Mission on Delhi. From beyond the origin of the ganges to the ocean, I am blessed, and carrying a blessing for all.

Paharganj, "Bird Town", is not a slum, it is old Delhi, with ancient properties and new. Bisected by Main Bazaar, it runs from Ramakrishna Ashram to New Delhi Train Station, a cacophony of almost-gridlocked taxis and porters. Tons of action, every step: No! it's every 8 feet, a new shop on either side, a pair of street vendors in front on the two sides, three to eight young men hanging on each other's shoulders, one or two beggars, mostly amputees and unwashed children, and a liquid flow of pedestrian and tricycle taxis each occupying their physical space plus at least six inches in front and back as they somehow safely navigate forward. Most working middle-class-ish people, some ladies say they are illiterate, and are actually offended when I test them with actual Devanagari letters.

I moved into Hotel Piorko on the 24th, so this is 2/27. Memory has gone from serial to episodic; I can tell you episodes.

Green Fields Shivaratri

Om namoh gaNeshaya ambika sahit

The sanskrit postvocalic word-final /h/, named 'visarga', is pronounced by these brahmins in a novel way, as [vhv?], with a very nice and sharp glottal stop after a repetition of the preceding vowel. When the language is used for litugical purposes it acquires certain different qualities, and this is a clear case. Final [h] emerges from a common phonetic process, in which at the end of an utterance or perhaps a significant phrase boundary, the end is marked by cessation of speech in both the dimensions of voicing and airflow. There can be airflow without vocal cord vibration, certainly, since only after airflow rises above a minimum pressure and velocity can the vocal cords change into the vibratory state. One is reminded of korean fricatives which are surrounded on both sides, before and after, by a measureable [h] aspiration phase. It all happens very fast so the end of voice and the end of airflow may be only imperceptibly separated, but apparently in sanskrit this timing gap became noticeable and indeed was made into a phonological category. Thus a boundary could be marked by a sharper boundary such as final glottal stop, or more gradually as final [h]. Once noticed and phonologized, this previously only-phonetic effect became a discrete choice, able to be specified and inserted according to rules of grammar. Sanskrit thus acquired final [h] as a certain kind of phonological boundary marker.

But that has clearly been forgotten. Now visarga has tripled, and ritually expanded from h to hv?, and boy is it a performance!

I doubt my sanskrit scholar friends will be happy to hear this, as not only the words but the pronunciation and grammar of sanskrit must be eternal and directly from the gods, and indeed I am appreciating the liturgy here, om reverence to ganesh accompanied by ambika, its sweetness itself, if I can get over the volume setting on that speaker behind my head.

Gurudev up in the hot seat is a dear, not just patiently enduring all the ceremony, before and after the 2 hours I was there, everyone coming up for darshan, but with a shiva puja on the way. I got to pour three ladles of an offering, I think it was milk, on the shiva lingam. In case anyone is wondering, the brahmin's sanskrit shlokas from unknown scriptures (oh it did include a whole rudram start to finish) boldly declared, finally shifted into sweet bhajans that we all knew, last my favorite shiva arati but the very first was another i didn't know with the refrain shiva lingam, and the old ladies shamelessly rocking out and clapping their hands shiva lingam, as their grown children freshly dressed sit before them on the carpeted floor, shiva lingam.

Right on.

In darshan after the lingam puja, I put my head on the floor, trying, if it can be called effort, to drop my concepts, and in the moment sensing a great light in front of me. There indeed we see the power of humility, I found gurudev to be a most humble and sweet fellow, his agenda is advancement of character, in words with me in haridwar but also on the wall in both hindi and english at the green fields school shivaratri ceremony. Again with great sweetness and love ministering to his parishioners, greeting all equally. Sitting back in my seat i couldn't help but notice everyone returning from darshan looked happy.

The map said, nearest metro station a mile walk. On the way I saw the California Burrito restaurant, hey let's try it. Not a bad approximation of Qdoba. I asked for cheese, they gave chicken, okay. Then I suddenly couldn't find my credit card, and didn't have cash for the drink. Nice counter guy so sweet puts a cup on my tray anyway, and when I don't fill it he comes to the table and takes it away to fill it for me himself. Thanks counter guy. I'm freaking out, can't find my room card either.

I can't help the feeling that this is sadhana, i'm undergoing the natural sadhana of my tradition, unfolding naturally within me. My learning crux at the moment is the release of concepts.

Torben Huss

I said hey that's the false fantasy of nostalgia, torben, you leave or lose the beloved, forgetting their faults and warts, growing yourself as they also grow and change, some long time later you meet again, so sadly because it is not the same any more, but neither are you the same, and the trick is to accept the new different one in yourself and the other, that is the true labor of love. See the reality and love that even as it has grown and changed and as you have.

Yes, ok, he says, but in those days with many choices I would say yes to many, now it is few.

He was kind to listen to my lecture on the fountain of experience, the support of concepts. As senses give a screenload of input, we construct concepts on the raw data of vision and hearing, we see this bit is two pigeons necking, that bit is a building, that a tree, these all concepts supported by the senses which feed into us like a fountain, every moment again feeding another rich raw data source and now again, and now again. Maybe nothing has changed, and the conceptualized bits remain with the same concept in a way, perhaps the same concept or perhaps a new reconstruction of a perfectly similar concept.

While wise religion which we may call spirituality (according to moi, in "bliss theory") says self-identified concepts give the emotional system the instructions on how to feel and therefore cause emotional downregulation, and thus that the religions and their founders' messages are just this message, stop identifying and thereby achieve emotional liberation,

On the other hand there is a perhaps dryer, more intellectual, perhaps conceptual layer to this. abandon concepts, it might say.

Suppose looking at an unchanging scene the conceptual structure, the identified categories and their colors shapes sounds, those are not changing. But actually the fountain of experience gives again the raw data, the screen-full of experienced brightness and color and direction, and even if the same concepts find the same support in the new moment, still it is a new moment, the fountain has not stopped because the view is the same, this is called sensory support. Dreams lack sensory support, thus undergo constant change. But eyes open experience of seen categories have sensory support in the view, and again the next moment perhaps the same categories find support again in the new moment.

But if one abandons categories, its not that I don't see the pigeons necking, I do, but then I see again the raw data of what is presented to my eyes, and maybe there again the pigeons are necking, again the tree, the building, but the abandonment of concepts is a practice of being able to let go all that structure and see again what comes, even seeing the same thing again and again it is new because the concepts are not held so tightly, dropped what appears next? One can see in more detail, one is more present, one can see what others cannot since once the categories are identified and in a way substituted for the sensory input the eyes close to the reality to the fountain that presents everything again and again. an unchanging world of boredom becomes a flow state.

Maybe I put it in more words this time, by writing, but torben was going with me. Which was reason enough to praise openness. in openness one is able to become free of concepts and instead see what is there, afresh. Plus it releases the emotional blocks of self-concept, and thus brings the flow state which seems reasonably to be the actual goal of the religions.

Thanks Torben. You can find him on facebook and see photo essays from previous years. It's my privilege to meet you.

Seeking a re-identifiable target rich environment

In benevolent gifting mode any place where crowds gather, train stations, temples, special sights, I can look for groups of the poor, the poor seem often to travel in groups, especially groups of women, where there is protection in numbers, why, because of illiteracy, and the great life-threatening vulnerability of an illiterate person attempting solitary travel. There is often a great crowd of extremely bored people at the train station, awaiting their train in self-similar groups. Among those a fraction are poor travellers going to kumbh mela or some religious place, or often a wedding. That is a target rich environment.

Many could benefit from a paper, notebook, pen gift and a few moment's introduction, what the point, what the path, some clues and clues about clues, how long it may take, how to practice. If I want to do good, it is good to encounter the people who need it.

But that is not enough, I am in science mode not benevolent gifting mode. My job is to enable others' benevolent gifting by proving this works. Without proof what sense does it make to give this to everyone. Science! Proof!

Therefore I need to pre-test, intervene, and post-test. That is i need to not just find people but be able to find them again! The post test requires that I can find the same person again on a later occasion. Maybe I can post-test at the end of the intervention, if they have the patience. That requires committed students.

So I am thinking, where is a source of identifiable known potentional students.

BMS

A union! A union full of workers in india!: they are probably not english-literate. But they are known individuals individually registered with union id numbers and addresses and so if I go through a union I may find folks who not just need it but for the sake of science can be found again to see if they really did something with it and if it really did make them able to read.

-- insert photo here -- A few blocks from hotel piorko in paharganj! It says hours are open till 11pm. I went tuesday finding it closed at eight, I went again today at 2pm, again closed, neighbor says a few months.

-- insert photo of magazines on the floor --

Okay, not this union.

How about workers in a known business.

Here's a well established business: sita ram diwan chand, a few blocks away in pahar ganj, the most famous maybe, a 100 year old chole batura shop, full to the gills with hungry indians, eating at stainless-steel standing tables, rs 40 for a lassi (i had to argue to get a full cup, ek unka kaamchor ne mujhe aadhaa gilaas diyaa), 90 for a plate of chole batura, a plastic tray with a paper plate holding two yummy deep fried breads and another paper bowl with some kind of rather yummy channa masala and some chopped unions and a 2 inch green chili in case you want that (not me!!). I've had two half-plates there, i'd have gone back today but the crowd was too much for me. Yesterday I asked the proprietor, so she seemed: are your people all literate? I mean, I don't think so. She denied it, yes they all read, devanagari? yes. Angrezi (english)? Ok ismen koi faaida nahin, no profit in this, forget it. I do take no for an answer.

Encouragement to Self

But the point I must keep reminding myself is not the educated but the uneducated. The uneducated have a steel plate over their heads and they are never going to rise above it, unless modi's school enforcers grab their children and require attendance (which so far they do, actually) and the school teachers actually deliver functional literacy to their students, only then the chain of illiteracy will be broken in india, and yes it is happening, it seems to be happening, they are on the upward track, india is happening. But that time scale is a generation. These ladies asking for a donation for their children's charity, they cannot read anything, no english, no devanagari, they have a notebook with pictures to show, not material to read.

Remember tom, read this next month next year next some time, remember. Five minutes in pahar ganj and you will meet people whose lives are in tiny boxes, tiny illiterate local silent vulnerable exploitable boxes, where the windows look out on stop signs, stop signs in every direction. Remember tom, those people are everywhere, those people are not failing to rise for failure of imagination or effort or the blessings of the world upon them but for the secret magic of reading, which turns every stop sign into the important message of its sender, from stop to go. Even if there is one person in this world that needs this, it is worth every effort to find them out and give them this tiny gift, a piece of paper, maybe a $0.12 notebook and a $0.05 pen, and a little time to explain pho net ics. Head, breath, voice. [h], open the mouth, [a], haha, draw a smily face, write haha, read haha, now study the drawings, what do they say? They say what the mouth does to make every sound, the tables say what letter writes each sound. You have a mouth so you can puzzle it out. Make two or three sounds at the same place or with the same action, the drawings will tell you which sound has what letter. Remember tom, do not flag do not be demoralized you are on this! We all need you, it's still not sparked the fire is still waiting your match, keep on keep on keep on, wake again try again. I here today wish you blessings tom who is the me of tomorrow. You are on a blessed and blessing path, this is great great work. Take a break if you must but come back to this work. The blessings of the world are on your head.

Okay, the task is to find connected illiterates, not just illiterates.

How about this hotel, there there seem to be have 20 or more employees, surely some are illiterate. I'll ask management.

Kunwar Pal Singh

I met him a couple days ago, the all-white, cornerless stage space had a cancellation, I hurriedly wrote a monolog prompt set and his camera guy and grip and staff took top-view and front view of the Instrument and its explanation, all in Hindi. A quick introduction to Dhvani-wali Lipi, the International Phonetic Alphabet, hopefully parseable for Hindi-speakers.

But we talked about it more. Really the individual random gifting and teaching that I am doing is probably instructive for me to learn how best to teach it, but it's getting sharp and polished to the limit of a street conversation. Now it's time to get committed students willing to spend an hour or two with sessions and writing/reading practice, and testing before and after. Then I can polish the whole thing. I need to rent a room, and advertise for students.

But the real goal is not teaching, but teaching teachers, and actually making teacher-teachers.

So I'm reaching out; to Hariprasad Doley at JNU for a tutorial there, to Saurav Gautam to rent his classroom sometime this weekend, posting a free public event there, time TBD, and to the Joint Director (Academics) at SCERT, Nahar Singh for an appointment for guidance how to get something into the government school curriculum.

Friday 28-Feb-2025

Wow, Rakesh is my Hero. So I wrote Director Saklani an email too, too long no doubt. As I discovered later he was spending the day listening to 18 presentations on all the projects and research initiatives and departments being decided upon today as the annual plan for the Nation. Certainly too busy to meet me, but I didn't know that :)

Walking over to the metro to find my way down to Hauz Khas where I used to live in Delhi, I remembered a promise to visit with Wasim my mold-maker. Gosh I took that metro in the wrong direction at least twice, and jumped off just before it left a third time. Plus Uber, plus waits, man.

I just love Wasim, he is such a gentleman, incorruptible. We had a chat, he perked me up. Why is Tom down? There was a beggar I gave the Instrument to yesterday; seeing him today he said he couldn't. oh, all the things I *should* have said! Like, what, look, is this not the head? Is this not breath? Does 'h' not mean breath? He couldn't be denying that. If I was smart I could have said the right thing and encourageed him. Instead it's Derrol Downer, after Debbie Downer and Danni Downer and Dirty Rotten Downers left and right. See, the thing about this project is how useless and elementary and impossible it seems to what sometimes seems like everyone.

• There's the hyperliterates who forgot they have a mouth, but everyone has a mouth and every sound of every language comes from a mouth, the same kind of mouth.

• There's the mechanically minded, the engineers who think these drawings are hyper-technical mysteries to their target audience, nobody is goint to understand these, when it's a picture of themselves, everyone recognizes themselves in even a cartoon picture? Oh is it too complicated that there is a nose on the left? Too mysterious that there is an arrow on the jaw pointing down, oh no, how will anyone be able to figure out that that means open your mouth, oh that's very technical Tom. I don't think so. The arrow metaphor is hardly metaphorical in any society that knows arrows, which is actually all societies, hello.

• There's the merely educated, who are plenty literate. For them literacy holds no mysteries to them in their one or few relevant scripts. Like fish in water they are unable to perceive intellectual interest or any mystery or any lack of perfect clear expression in a sequence of letters. Every sign, every writing says Go.

  It's SOOO boring to talk about elementary education, when we are all grownups here. Really your actual A B C's, really Tom? Could we please change the subject, please just don't bore me with one more word. Eyes turn away, I'm busy here, bye.

  You know that's all true for the literate. But we're not aiming at the literate, we're aiming at the illiterate, for whom every sign is a STOP sign. It's them, dear Tom, it's them. So get over the boredom and wake up to the unbelieveable social stratification and class warfare and complete vulnerability and high potential for fraud and abuse between the literate and the illiterate.

  Any indicator can MARK social levels, but here is a FUNCTIONALITY that DEFINES social levels. Do you really think someone looking at stop signs all day long has no interest or importance for reading?

  Okay enough, I made my point, many times by now I think.

I made drawings of the Thai shower drain fitting, and told him to make them for India. He said, Okay. The in-pipe P trap, he thinks there is only corruption in the business of putting government money to use in public works projects to keep the stink down in the pipes, that won't make money only fill the pockets of corrupt officials. Okay.

It's not Modi but others making hate speech pronouncements, rabble-rousing against the Muslims. Oh those Muslims they are having too many children, unlike us small-family Hindus. Since when were Hindus all about the small families? To me that's a new item.

Whatever. Wasim also encouraged me to give the literacy materials to Muslims as much as anyone; they need it and want it as much as any, just because their Script of the Gods is Urdu/Arabic instead of Devanagari doesn't mean they aren't eager to also read street signs.

Nice talk, just a social visit. Maybe his brother Cheapest Furniture in Delhi, will make Siddhasanas for me, www.siddhasana.com. Tomorrow we'll meet at 1.

Okay now it's 3:30pm, and time to hustle over to NCERT and knock on Saklani-ji's door. Uber gets me there around 4:30. The building from the picture on the website, glorious redbrick new, is NOT the Director's building. Cross back over the street Tom where the Uber dropped you off before, he's on the 1st floor (meaning, 2nd floor).

The nice lady at the gate calls up, asking Do you have an appointment? I say, I sent email, and I'm here to give him something, if he has no time that's okay too. She gets on the phone upstairs, koi firangi aa gayaa Director ko gift lene ke liye, a foreigner has arrived bringing the Director a gift. Boy that's a lost translation. Go on up, apparently.

On One, another sign-in book, same details before entering the Director's area. Okay. In past the glass doors, white hall, open door on left, closed door past it, with, was it brass signage, Director's Office? Anyway that's closed. I'm standing mouth open in the hall like an idiot, and in the first room are like 7 or 8 men staring back at this apparition from far away. I've got the routine, though, so I just start. Here everybody take one of these. Suddenly emerges from the side door into the Director's Office, Bharti, perfectly named, gorgeous and in charge and open minded, Bharti Mutreja, personal secretary to the Director of the National Council of Educational Research and Training. See here the head, the breath the voice, this h means breath ....

She listens, sees, its clicks, she understands, smiles. At one point I hear a comment from behind, this is a good thing. I turn and say Thank you! Quickly she scans, structures, decides. This is for teachers, right? I say Yes, of course (not fast enough to say, "and also for students"). She's all over it. I ask, I want access to the DIET teacher training institutes to visit and teach them, and to enlist students I encounter there to do some science with pre-test, teach, post-test. Bharti says, Go to the third floor and meet Dr. Sharad Sinha, she is in charge of Teacher Instruction, she will open every door for you to the DIETs. Okay? Well, yes, actually, that's what I'm saying!

Did you ever ask for something, and the door just opens? What a path I am on.KP> One young fellow escorts me upstairs. Another brings water, then coffee, already while I wait for like two minutes. Shortly Professor Sinha, fabulous in Sari and just from her presentation, so clear and ready for the next, Tell me, what is this? The pitch, the understanding, the approval, then How can I help? The doors to teach teachers at DIETs, please open. I will send you contacts and open those doors. I didn't quite fall off my seat, but this is really quite amazing.

So I promised to come back, and give IPA lectures to teacher-educators in District Institutes of Educator Training, where D. El. Ed. students are on track to teach in the government schools. Okay, how about a month off a month on, I'll be back in April or May?

I think maybe I can relax a bit now. Wow.

Then a pleasant long walk to Deer Park metro along Aurobindo Marg, past the old ashram I lived in in 1986, into a new grocery store, Om Sai Ram the Modern Bakery and groceries store, first I've seen in India, but it's been open since Covid. I'll look it up if it's a sensible investment. Some staffer took my photo while checking out, like a star had walked in. Really? Thumbs up, nice store! Then two metros home, and an hour on my back in the bed. Now it's midnight and time to write a followup note to Sinha ji and Bharti ji. How did I land in this bed of flowers?!

I can tell you how: Rakesh Jugran. Thank you Rakesh! Thank you Bharti! Thank you Sharad Sinha ji!

There is work ahead but with these connections and fair reporting, the path forward is long and upward. I'm happy.

Friday 04-Mar-2025

• Maybe some constructivist angles on IPA. Leading questions, What is phonetics? What are the differences between sounds?
• email from SCERT JD Nahar Singh's office: meet March 4 11am, (but I'm over Munich about that time; but hopefully a reschedule for Zoom later.)

• A long sleep, needing Vit D and accumulated short sleep brings headaches.
• i e ae e i open extra open, same u o O o u

• u i u i and tongue fronting with a cracker.

• Down to return the power adapter, up to get the nonexistent bag from Pitaji,

• A moment of courage?
• The next shoe-repairman.
• The 1692-founded Anglo-Arabic school.
• Shraddhananda Marg snd the nice ladies, chai, and drawing the smiley face made a committed Shanti.
• Shiva's moon, a blessing from India as I end this phase of this project

Schools of education and this?! Peterson says Whole Word learning is BS, but isn't that a black-white or 1D view of a multi-dimensional process? Part-word learning after Some Letters recognition, how about that?

The difference between US Schools of Education and Indian is like this. In the US the professors of reading education are not in the office, don't respeond to notes left, cannot be reached; instead there is educational litigation pro phonetics anti phonetics pro phonetics, let's get the lawmakers in and be sure everyone does our one size fits all theory of the moment. Nobody is interested; they are living their nice professorial jobs and why go to the office? Just my impression. Whereas in India the national and state directors of Educational research are in proper offices and having meetings about eighteen departments' scientific initiatives to improve education in India, they are actively, smartly, so it seems, doing their best to improve the actual curricula for the children of a billion person country. Eagerly. That's the difference. Instead of reading curriculum by congressional statute according to the backward mindedmost teachers union, it's let's take what makes sense and keep pushing.

Like, the big deal was going from Devanagari Nationalism in the government schools to now a lot of English medium schooling in even the government schools. The big division in class and everything is, Can you afford to pay fees for your kids to go to school; if yes, then you get English, if no, then your kids won't be reading 80% of the signs around them, except to understand the message: STOP YOU ARE EXCLUDED which is what a sign says when you canno read it. But some years back the government schools also started teaching some English, and perhaps that is expanding. It might take a generation of teachers to really move that forward.

Yesterday, JNU. Hariprasad, a great amazing linguist, and Priyanka, another Assamese linguistics masters student, and Lobsang, another. From Northeast India come the great Assamese cultural cosmopolitus. Speakers from there, home languages Mising, Boro, and oh Lobsang what was your native language? but Tibetan, and learning Bhotiya the Tibetan liturgical script, which is apparently all you get out there for anything like your own language, much monopolized by the priests.

I asked to meet late, and we arranged late, so it being Sunday and locks no keys, we got to sit outside, a picnic table out behind the School of Sanskrit, where very naturally and unremarkedly Neel Gai ("Blue Cow" which is neither blue nor cow) and peacock wander by. H P & L were very kind to listen to my 61 point talk on the Entry Dance and IPA as basic literacy. It should be 2 or 3 talks, really. P thought maybe some of my pronouncements were rather strong, such as the intellectual dominance of Linguistics where people know what they are talking about and All Other Fields where they don't, at least with respect to such basic things as, what is a word (a spelling? No! a meaning and a PRONUNCIATION! -- unless you never want to speak it!). All launched into a network of detailed observations about Northeastern languages. I kept some notes, missing much. I gave out a few booklets pens and copies of the Instrument, with hopes they would have a chance to pass them on.

IPA vs TomsPA differences were pointed out. Hariprasad says No we do need [æ] and [ɔ] for even Hindi since they made that sound change from Sanskrit [e:] to [ai] to [&aesh;] and [o:] to [au] to [ɔ]. I was taking the line that since there is dialect variation, so I understand, and [ai] and [au] do exist presently in some Hindi dialects (do they really?), then I would just give it that way, thus economizing on paper.

A4 allows more vertical space.

I need to have a range of versions controlled by a parameter in the PDF URL. nh=4 could suggest the number of vowel heights is 4, yielding then a u i o e (3 heights) and plus æ and ɔ.

Alternative presentations include different size or count of downward arrows indicating degrees of openness (better for line drawings), or multiple jaw lines (better for animations, may I put it that way?).

then for example this paragraph will be encoded as follows:
CCEC fOR V?AmPlV CCIS PARAGRACC WIll bV VCCOdVd AS fOllOWC

Yossarian had chosen the site, and he and Orr had
YOCCARIAN H?d CCO?EN CC? SVTV  ANd HV ANd OCC HAd

raised the tent to get her.  Orr, who was a grinn-
R???Cd CC? TENT TV GET HER   OCC  ??V WAS A GRINC

ing pygmy with pilot’s wings and thick, wavy brown
ICC P?Gm? WICC PVlOT S WICCS ANd CCI?k  W?V? bR??N

hair parted in the middle, furnished all the know-
H??R PARTVd IN CCV mICdlV  fURNICC?d AlC CCV ?N??

ledge, while Yossarian, who was taller, stronger,
lEd?V  ??VlV YOS?ARIAN  ?HV WAS TAlCER  STROCCER

broader, and faster, did most of the work.
bR??d?R  ANd fAST?R  dId mOST O? CCV WORk

Just the two of them lived there, although the tent was
j?ST CCV T?V O? CC?m lVvVd CCERV  AlCC???? CCV TENT WAS

big enough for six.  When summer came, Orr rolled
bIG ?N???? fOR SI?   W?EN S?C?mR CVmV  ORV ROlC?d

up the side flaps to allow a breeze that never blew
?P CCV SVdV flAPS T? AlC?? A bRVVzV CCAT NEvER bl??

to flush away the air baking inside.
T? fl?CC AW?? CC? VVR bVkICC INSVdV

• Phonetically reliable English letters: 1 each of j z, 2 each of v, 3 of k, 7 of b f m, 18 l, 20 d,
  =51/412 = 1/8

• Functionally IPA-readable English letters: 1 each of U, 2 each of Y, 5 each of G, 6 of H, 7 of P, 11 W, 13 E, 18 O, 17 I, 18 S, 18 N, 18 T 27 R, 28 A,
  =189/412 = 46%

• Easily adjusted to IPA by general rules (GVS,&c, given above): 41 V, 69 C
  = 110/412 = 27%

• More complex: 62 ? =62/412=15%

IPA alone including the phonetically already reliable English letters (here 1/8) and the unreliable but often-IPA-interpretable instances of English letters (46%) gives more than half interpretability (58%) by learning that subset of IPA alone.

An English-oriented IPA version which also teaches those few general rules of h decoding and c softening etc. brings the reasonably-pronounced subset of English in this sample up to 85% of English letters, leaving a residue of 15% for implicit learning or further discussion.

I think this justifies providing a version, overlay, or added page, at least "For English learners", including the capital letters.

A reference (post-IPA-learning) version for Devanagari with aspirated rows for stops, another for Urdu with initial medial final letter versions.

Here's my pitch to the CERTs and DIETs.

If you think "aitch ey aitch ey" helps anyone read "haha", you are really messed up. Is it possible that English education is really messed up?

Please de-emphasize the ABC song, because the sounds of BCDGPTVZ have no /iy/, the sounds of FLMNSX have no [ε], etc. "h" contains no [h]. If my argument is correct, the author of the ABC song was intending to give the sounds of the letters not a set of specialty names to memorize and become confused by. Therefore let us follow the original intention and revert to the sounds!

Instead how about this phonetic feature song, to the tune of the ABC song.

(ABC) head breath voice (voiceless) 

(DEFG) vowel consonant 

(HIJKLMNOP) open back-rounded front-spread 

(QRS   ) nasal stop fricative 

(   TUV) flap glide lateral 

(WX    ) labial (labiodental interdental) dental (alveolar) retroflex 

(    YZ) palatal velar uvular (pharyngeal glottal) 

All sounds use some of these features, 

Those who know can be their teachers.

Thursday 20-Mar-2025

What can I report?

Let's go back to the things I wanted to report, and report them.

Tomorrow I will report conceptual progress, things I've learned while reading today.

• To teach IPA constructively, it is important to give the students leading questions, such as What is phonetics? and, What are the differences between sounds?, and then to give them time to propose them for discussion in small groups and bring them to the rest of us. Constructivist teaching is the basis of deep learning: according to Piaget learning is invention, so we must give the students problems and the chance to invent their solutions. It adds time to the process, but it makes for actual learning and self-competence.

• A kind email came in from SCERT JD Nahar Singh's office, but someone had not read my request's constraint, that my flight was Monday night, so it offered to meet on Tuesday morning. I must follow up and try to meet again on my next trip. Best to follow up soon and give advance notice that later followup is to be expected.

• Running out of rapamycin seems related to increasing tinnitus.

• The vowel heights are indicated by combining [open] arrow with [i] and [u]; but as pointed out by Hariprasad Doley, it is not just Farsi/Bengali but also Hindi which widely use [æ, ɔ]. To make an appropriate set of drawings, I'll need to include two more rows, less of [open] and more of [open], which may fit in A4 paper but not well on 8.5x11" paper, or...

  Maybe turn the vowels page by 90 degrees and add sets of multi-columns for [i, e, æ], for [u, o, ɔ], and for [ə, a].

• Teach contrasts!
  • Use [u i u i] and if they struggle with tongue fronting give them a cracker.

  • Use [i e i e] to demonstrate [open], then [u o u o] similarly.
    Ask: Is this difference the same difference?

  • More contrasts to compare proprioception and feature-drawings:
    • For [front-unrounded] vs [back-rounded]: [e o e o]
    • For degrees of [open]: [i e æ e i e æ], and [u o ɔ o u o ɔ], and [ə a ə a]

• I lost the bag with Pitaji's gift to his grandbaby! Remember to get a substitute and go see Nikhil!

• It's my last night in Delhi, once again time to evaluate, am I doing the most important thing I can do?

  Among people the most needily illiterate are the poor. Among the poor the most need is among the women. Among women, who?

  Pratibha's nightmare describes a solitary traveling illiterate woman, given misdirection by a stranger, helplessly lost and vulnerable, even captured and enslaved, even to a life of prostitution, consider the deeper depth of this nightmare: that such an unfortunate is unable to find her way home -- since being illiterate she cannot read signs, directions, or maps. She cannot really escape, and must accept a hellish life. This image captures my mind, poor thing! (Did I mention that when I see poor people travelling it is in large groups? This is the reason. Being mostly illiterate, they are especially vulnerable alone, but achieve safety in numbers, or maybe some one among them can read the signs.)

  But among poor women, it is the prostitutes, who may lack and certainly need literacy the most.

  So I googled the red light district of Delhi. It is Shraddhananda Marg, just past the New Delhi Train Station. A car-parts-distributor ghetto by day, the ladies appear after dusk.

  Reading more, some thugs were beating up some passerby last year, on that street, when a policeman tried to intervene. The policeman was beaten to death. Great.

  Should I go or shouldn't I? I started out, with that intention. Exiting the metro station, at a point I paused, should I exit toward the red lights and the thugs, or go some safer direction, like home?

  But my feet were already walking that way, and why should I be afraid in India, a country where I have never been afraid. So I dismissed the fear and kept walking, a little amused that my own mental laziness might seem like courage.

• Out of the metro at the train station, the sun was near setting. By the lane marker on the ground sat another shoe-repairman, putting away his awl and knife and spare leather, into a sheet to carry home. Here bhai, can you read? No, he said. Perfect, take this. You know in this dialog you don't have to say everything at once; they are looking at a very curious piece of paper, and they are very curious about it. They may know themselves to be quite illiterate and painfully so and also irremediably so after a lifetime surrounded by STOP signs and frustrated after frustration. But they take it one glance at a time, and look up with a question, and kindly accept the direction that says, here is the head, your head, here is breath, these are what you do, these are what you write. One at a time, with pause time for uptake and to let that dropped stone sink into the pool of understanding, to feel the significance of that understanding also. There are 22 secrets of literacy here, I told you a few. Every every day, two two letters. (Hindi reduplication, actually it's "one one day, two two letter", meaning every day two letters.)

  Shoe guy is a full grown man, gray hairs, shaved two weeks ago, keeping himself presentable for a guy sitting on asphalt all day long, hoping for a few repairable shoes to walk by. He seems very smart, curious, open, engaged; his Hindi is understandable to me, and he seems to get what I say when I check in at different points.

  Am I crazy to believe we understand each other? His gratitude is palpable. This is such meaningful work. I cannot leave this aside, despite those who say you cannot teach literacy in a short encounter. If I can teach haha huhu hihi, how to write laughter, in two minutes, as I can and as I do, and if they can look for those letters on the signs around them to get clues about the messages on those signs, as they can, then let's not falsely minimize this becaus every little thing is helpful, and they also have a Very Productive path forward.

  I ask shoe guy, was just magic to you, like a complete mystery, a secret, a moment ago before I told you? Yes, he says. ji haan. Now that I explained it to you do you see this is [h] and this is [a] and this is [haha]? Yes he says. Ji haan.

  The secrets are explained in the drawings. One one day, two two letters. Practice: abhyaas kijiye. Practice writing until comfortable. Practice reading until forever. Hamesha tak.

• Walking on, soon I pass in front of the 1692-founded Anglo-Arabic school. A few mussulmans are still coming out. I go in, guard fellow, take this, he gets a bit of explanation. Please give it to the principal, okay? Okay, I will.

  Now that fellow was just being nice. But should I have not done it? Suppose the chance is small that a teacher will see it, that the teacher will understand its significance by looking at it, that they will figure out how to run with it, that they will run with it. Suppose the chance is one in a hundred out of one in a hundred. Fine, one in ten thousand, for such a chance I would take a very long detour because the value of that on average is not just greater than zero but a very very great value greater than zero, because this is viral, this can go from one to another to another without end, this can impact and empower dramatically with large return for small investment of effort and curiosity. If I do it ten thousand times and it only works once, it still overturns the especially-illiterate-Muslim illiteracy of Delhi, an outcome worth many lifetimes of effort.

  Like a new drought-resistant seed is worth many lifetimes of effort, and could save thousands or millions.

• Shraddhananda Marg snd the nice ladies, chai, and drawing the smiley face made a committed Shanti.

  Deep into Shraddhananda Marg, the ladies were appearing, sitting a bit bored and skeptical on the stoops of every other store. First I waved my paper, she said I know that, I don't need that. Shanti said, What's that. The first said, actually maybe you could use that. Now there's a group of four, curious about the gora, what's he giving out. Here, here, here, take the papers, take the pens, take the notebooks, take the last. Shanti watches carefully, asks questions. When I get to [haha] a girl maybe 16 laughs hysterically and skips away; she got it. But Shanti was studying, wasn't laughing. Five places, six actions, two tones high and low. Practice writing till comfortable, reading for forever. See here's [h] and [a] in "Paharganj", see it? Yes. Okay, I get it, she says. A pause to take it all in.

  Do you want some chai? I would love some chair. She went away, I have a few minutes of chitchat with others, Shanti returns, chai in a plastic bag and a few cups. The best chai ever I tasted.

  Thank you Shanti. Please do my work for me here. Download print copy share explain. My blessing is on you and my hopes are with you.

  We didn't have much time together. But she may be able to teach a little to many.

  Next time I come I hope I can meet her and see if it has taken hold. I hope I will have youtube videos explaining the whole thing in a series of short talks to Hindi learners. And in English to potential teachers in other languages. That's my next work to do at home. By now, just started, but started.

• Walking home I see Shiva's moon like a bowl hanging two hands above the horizon in the early night sky. I feel it is a message of blessing on me and this work from Mother India herself, as I end this phase of this project.

Friday 21-Mar-2025

Such encouragement, no, such a spirit of competition against his own former student, put this project back 20 years. I wasn't so discouraged as to abandon it, but yes, enough to backburner it. After all he had been equally dismissive of my Theory of Humor in 1995, saying he thought I could hardly contribute much of significance to such a large subject as Humor." The completeness of his dismissal was exceeded only by its worthlessless. Veatch's Theory of Humor remains as far as I know, dominant in its field. Another guest lecture is scheduled at UCLA for May.

Was Bill mad that I left him in my seventh and final year of grad school to become Liberman's advisee? -- a move which finally gave me success! Or did Labov felt that was the way to encourage his students? In my thesis acknowledgements, I mentioned in addition to much praise, his severe practice of encouraging his students by leaving them alone. Perhaps it was encouragement.

I contemplate these questions because Labov died last December, well into his 90's, just a couple of weeks before I set out on this trip. It is past time to move beyond discouragements and sadness, time also to learn from what Labov left behind. A giant, we can perhaps stand on his shoulders to form a unified view of the literacy obstacles faced by ghetto kids in the US and tribal and poor kids in India.

So here goes.

But it is clear that in India there is complete and total illiteracy in some populations.

What's key here is our mental model of the various mental models of members of the changing speech community. Our job is to see who has what capabilities. In the world of literacy, where there is a lot more reading than writing, and where tests of recognition and understanding are easy, the sociolinguistic variables of interest may not be much in the productions, the writings, of the people, but in their perceptions, their understanding, their reading.

The cluster of sociolinguistic variables known as literacy surely includes the ABC song, which is the list of the names of the English letters, but then a sequence, if not a tree or a lattice, of mutually dependent tasks from sounding out the first letter of a word, to full excellent reading, which my friend Dee Tadlock at ReadRight.com defines as freely reading for content and enjoyment including also reading aloud with fluency as if speaking naturally. Close to the beginning of the lattice is being able to read street signs well enough to independently get off the bus where you need to.

One branch in the lattice is whether you learn the ABC song or not. I personally think that letter naming, as contrasted with phonetic letter sound identification, is Highly Optional and generally confuses learners more than it helps.

Another branch in the lattice is between the IPA and other scripts, and additional branches are between various conventionally-established scripts in the languages of the world. For example at age 63 I learned the Bengali and Thai scripts, during this very trip, tasks of about ten days each, much lengthened by the not having of the phonetic interpretation of the letters preorganized and available to me.

The level of literacy I achieved in these semi-phonetic alphabets was that of having definite knowledge in many cases and a good guess in the remainder for each letter such that I could successfully sound out many of the signs visible on the road but at a pace slower than the pace at which we drove by. I could read the first syllable or so from each sign. My stays were in Thailand 12 days, in Calcutta 9, both much occupied by everything but script learning.

So the nature of the lattice of literacy seems to be that a learner's knowledge state is represented by the state of the lattice, each node carrying its state of knowledge and capability along some path in the universe of literacies. Branches occur where different skills are independent; sequence occurs where one skill depends upon another.

And a global knowledge state attributeable to any person is the set of knowledge states on the nodes of that conceptual lattice of knowledge.

If knowledge were sequential and full acquisition of A were required to precede any acquisition of B, then a link A -> B in a knowledge lattice would imply that any level of knowledge of B prerequires 100% competence in A, so that only the terminals of the lattice need be specified for a global knowledge state. However, this is absurd; although knowledge is in some ways dependent on prerequisite knowledge, still, one often learns a bit of many things at once, and a bit more, in perhaps random order.

One follows my own experience. Charan Singh Kedarkhandi asked me to entertainingly speak to the assembled kids at the school in Joshimath. Grasping at straws I remembered the ABC song.

ABCDEFG
HIJKLMNOP
QRS, TUV
 WX,  YZ
..

Which means I don't need to teach it, and in fact perhaps it is an obstacle in learning.

Let's have a look at Labov's work on Literacy and African American Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers. In Can Reading Failure Be Reversed, Labov summarizes linguistic differences between Standard Classroom English (SCE) and AAVE: As is typical among languages of the world, final consonants are reduced or deleted syllable- and word-finally.

• in final consonant clusters such as /d/ in "told";
• in final semi-vowels toll=toe, four=foe, (hence you'll=you, I'll=I)
• in single final consonants at a lower frequency seat=seed=see.

• The typically Southern /e/-/i/ merger before nasals (play tinnis, pen=pen..)
• L-Vocalization-derived mergers fill=feel, fell=fail (See Veatch 1991).
• Diphthong-simplification find=found=fond, time=Tom.

"All of the AAVE speakers studied in South Harlem had mastered the alphabet, no matter how poor their reading level, as far as the beginnings of words was concerned. Patterns of reading errors rarely showed mistakes in the identification of the first letter. ... The over-all pattern is that AAVE speakers use alphabetic skills in attacking the first consonant, and the first letter of the vowel, but abandon such efforts beyond this point. This loss of confidence in the alphabet is a direct result of the very abstract relationship between the alphabet and the surface realizations of words in AAVE.