May All Be Literate

IPA First for basic, practical, universal literacy

Let's make
Everybody Literate!

(Here's why)

781 million people are illiterate today (Wikipedia) (map)

Of over 7000 languages spoken today over 3000 are unwritten (Ethnologue).

Urgently climbing our own social ladders, must we ignore these precious humans?

The innovation is:

Sound charts labelled with mechanical drawings.

No requirement of Latinate vocabulary (labial velar fricative ...) -- or even common language; this requires only human anatomy and the preliterate ability to perceive your own mouth. No college entrance OR tuition required.

This innovation may enable giving basic literacy to illiterate speakers of even unwritten languages.

Material cost USD $0.25 each including practice notebook and pen (India street price).


One two-sided sheet of paper by itself or with a little phonetic instruction can communicate and teach much of the International Phonetic Alphabet, under the rule, one sound one letter -- IF it uses mechanical line drawings instead of Latin words like "fricative" or "velar". Line drawings are universal and independent of language or level.

An IPA Chart with line drawings therefore expands the potential audience from post-graduate Linguistic Phonetics classes to Everyone -- irrespective of language or level.

The one sound one letter principle reduces literacy to an easily-understood problem, quickly enabling full insight and competence for the student, who can then easily generalize to orthographies of any complexity -- even Chinese is taught with a phonetic alphabet, pinyin. Further, the universal business language English, is phonetic enough that c is [k,s,ch] final e drop with lengthening preceding vowel. Great Vowel Shift rotates long vowels. i: -> ay, e: -> i:, a: -> e:, u: -> aw, oo -> u:

Click, download, print, copy, and share.
   

Share Basic Literacy

IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet, is a universal doorway to literacy.

First learn IPA, with or without a teacher, with or without tech.

Then you can learn any script for any language very easily.

If your language was unwritten, use IPA to write your own language.

If English or European script is seen, use IPA to read it, mostly.

To learn any (school or home) language, use IPA to write the actual sounds
because to speak it you must know the sounds.

IPA offers basic phonetic literacy to all.

Download, print, copy (2 sides onto 1 page), share, explain.

Teach pre-schoolers, ladies at home, other Teachers,

everyone.

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Copyright © 2000 - 2025 Thomas C. Veatch. All rights reserved.
Created: December 29, 2023; Modified January 27, 2024; February 23, 2025.