Essence

• Left: nothing is happening: silence. This is how I write it, with [/-].

• Middle: something is happening. What? Grab your throat high and deep and say [sosososo], do you feel it? That vibration? That is Voice. I write VOICE as [+/]. See how everything is voiced on this page? (On the back side some things are UNVOICED with [/-].)

• Right: something else is happening. Teacher says [h] (not [hɑ] not [hə] just [h]). What is this? Breath! Out-breath, loud and audible. That's what the drawing shows in the head: That's what you do. Now look at the [h]: That's how we write it.

Teacher says: "I will do it. Look at my mouth now."
Teacher does: [mouth wide open, no sound], count to 3.
Teacher says: "Oh! I made a mistake. I forgot the [+/]! I didn't make the voice sound. Let me do it again."
Teacher does: [mouth wide open, no sound], count to 2, then a short but plenty loud [ɑ].
Teacher says: One is not enough, it says both so I have to do both.

Now, again: [h] then [ɑ]: [hɑ]. Twice: [hɑhɑ]. Four symbols, one sound each; together they mean something: a laugh.

You can read it phonetically (by sounds) because you know these phonetic symbols; so, you know how to say it. Because you understand what is said when you say it, you understood what is written: you read it.

That is the whole idea: action in the mouth (phonetic reality), symbols to identify them (symbolization), sequence of symbols, sequence of sounds (segmentality), meaning. This is the essence of how to read.

Introduction

What IPA is

IPA defines phonetic symbols by the locations and actions which physically produce the different sounds of language in the human mouth. This is "articulatory phonetics". Gestures, locations, and actions in anyone's mouth sound identifiably similar to everyone: each sound from any mouth can be heard as the same as that sound from any other mouth. That's why humans can share spoken language.

In this way, IPA is truth: basic, foundational.

India says, Satyam Eva Jayate: Truth Always Wins.

What IPA First makes possible

If IPA is known there can be no such thing as an unwritten language; write it with IPA; share it; now it is written.

If IPA is taught then correct learning theory is followed and learning is accelerated. Teaching should build on or extend existing knowledge. The existing knowledge is the student's knowledge of the sounds of their own language, in which they are experts. The extension that gets built is that student learns mere labels for those existing sound categories. The learning is nearly trivial; entirely trivial except that some new fun sounds get to be learned, since no language includes ALL the sounds of all the languages; and that some languages ignore some differences; the babies learned to not perceive clear and audible differences. A practical subset might include one's own language's sounds plus those additional sounds that adjacent languages might use; adjacent in geography or history or even interest. But it's fun to learn the whole set: Why NOT learn the voiced bilabial trill, [ʙ], or various click sounds? It's fun to be able, or at least to try, to do everything that humans can do!

If IPA is learned (first!), every language can quickly be learned, because you already know the different sounds that occur in that language, which are merely examples of what you know from the IPA. The sounds of each language are a subset of IPA sounds.

Because IPA includes English (lower-case) letters, most English street-signs can be read using IPA pronunciation once you learn the IPA, imperfectly but usefully: when you recognize the signage (and even a bad guess can be recognized on the sign), then you have arrived.

Every script and every word in every language is easily defined using IPA. Modern dictionaries use IPA for the pronunciations of words. IPA is the ground. To learn any script, learn IPA first, then see how the script is defined in IPA: easy! For example, see Devanagari.

IPA First means that for those who have limited time in school with teachers or limited technological support, a phonetic alphabet offers a learnable, phonetically accurate writing system with worldwide coverage.

The innovation: cartoons

Cartoon pictures (mechanical line drawings) show the distinctive features of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Thus we remove the requirements of academic vocabulary (and entrance) such as "fricative", "velar", etc.. We loosen the requirement of school based learning so that anyone from prisoners to isolates to the urban poor can either self-study this content or learn it with minimal support or learn it on-line. A little explanation, few classes, can put the student on the path to figuring out the basics themselves.

Phonetic drawings make the IPA letters' phonetic features clear to nearly anyone (not if they are blind, not if they can't understand cartoons, say age 3 or 4) including any illiterate or semi-literate schoolchild or adult. Drawings may make a phonetic alphabet self-decodable even when picked up from a dispenser on the road. They can certainly be strange-looking before you take them seriously and actually use them. But then, they turn out to be excellent study aids for students and teaching aids for in-person teachers. They clearly, unambiguously, show voice, gesture, action, and location; that is, how the sounds are made and therefore what the sounds really are. (And TomVeatch.com/read has apps to listen/learn/test yourself for homework or in class.)

How it spreads

Master-Teachers trained with this Curriculum can teach the next generation of Master-Teachers and Teachers (in any language). Then, either of them can Teach any illiterate or semi-literate person, child or adult. Since one who has learned can also teach, hopefully this system will indeed become viral so that everyone, worldwide, will soon have the chance to learn to read and write their own language (and others).

Curriculum Structure

Student	Teacher	Master- teacher	Part	What it holds
*	*	*	Level 0	The essence: [h], [ɑ], above.
*	*	*	Level 1	Smiley face drawing. Voice & aspiration. Name vs sound. Vowels #1: [ə], vowel length, vowel heights. Consonants #1: location vs action. Simplest first: Teach actions first. The actions of stop, fricative, flap, approximant, lateral.
*	*	*	Level 2	Vowels #2: forward vs backward at lips or tongue. Consonants #2: locations/places: Teach our 5 locations by voiceless stop bursts only. [p t T c k]. Then the nasal proof, and the nasals at the same five places. Tones: Big heavy slow has a low tone. Small light fast has a high tone. 4 tone marks is a start. Practice: CVC reading and transcription (voiceless stops plus h and any vowel).
*	*	*	Level 3	Vowels #3: the full Vowel Triangle first, then the lax vowels [ʊ ɪ ɛ ʌ], each a reduced gesture toward the corner vowel it is a version of. Consonants #3: the rest, from easy to difficult (native, known-foreign, learned-unperceivable, unlearned-unperceivable). Practice: Request, Hear, Write, Discuss, Read any local or English word, students' choice (any CVCVC combination). Thus Levels 0,1,2,3 gives both sides of the Instrument: Basic and Intermediate levels, aiming to include Hindi and English. Advanced has more, remember you can learn this on IPAA.org
*	*	*	Level 4	Review all, especially the vowel triangle and the difficult consonants. Practice and Test: read/speak and hear/transcribe.
-	-	-	Level 5	For those who want more: the rest of the IPA chart, rounding mismatches, adjuster marks.
-	-	-	Level E	English: lettermap, soundmap, dictionary lookup with IPA, then a lifetime of words.
	*	*	Teacher Training	1 Approach: to respect and love the students. 3 Motivations: Travel, Messages, Transactions. 3 Scripts. (Without the Instrument) Checklist: venue, schedule, pretest, results, instrument, notebook.
		*	Master-Teacher Training	3 Expectations: Strategy, Money/Career, Language Competence. 6 Tasks: to find, motivate, qualify, teach, and test new Teachers, and to collect results and report back to us for quality control and strategic planning.

Your goal is to read as comfortably as you talk.

To be a certifiable teacher you need that plus Level 5 plus Teacher Training: a couple more classes of 30 minutes.

Your goal is to create successful Students who can read and write with a phonetic alphabet, one sound for each letter, and once they have basic literacy to go on the lifetime learning path of self-study.

To be a certifiable Master-Teacher you need all that (0-4, 5 and E, Teacher Training) plus Master-Teacher Training; perhaps 2 more hours.

Your goal is to create successful, effective Teachers and Master Teachers.

The February 2025 version: TeacherCurriculum-2025.php. Teachers: read Teacher Training before your first class.

Lessons

Level 0: The Essence above is Level 0.

Teach [h] like this: point to the head; make the loud out-breath; explain: "That is what you do." Point to [h]; explain: "That is what we write."

Teach [ɑ] like this: point to the jaw arrow and explain: The arrow says "Open". Demonstrate it first without voice; ask them to look at you. Interrupt yourself. Teacher says: "I made a mistake. I did this, but I didn't do the voice part; let me try again." Open the mouth, briefly do the voicing: that's it! Again. Teacher says: "I have to do both; one is not enough. The pictures say what we do." Point to [ɑ]: that's what we write.

Now the teacher writes [h ɑ] = [hɑ], says it, then twice, [hɑhɑ], and asks what it means. Teacher says: "You read it."

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Level 1: Smiley-face; [- + h]; []'s; [ə]; V height & length; C action

How to actually write and read

Smiley-face (Writing 1.1)

Draw smiley faces. After one, do more. Practice till you like it. Keep students actively doing something wherever possible. A student who writes, learns.

[hɑhɑhɑhɑ]: (Writing 1.2)

Show "h" stroke order: vertical, shoulder, arm.

To write, practice every letter, write on the line, check stroke order and direction, write while saying it aloud, then easy words like "baba", then harder words as able.

Write [h h h], say [h h h]. Practice until you like it.

Write [ɑ ɑ ɑ], say [ɑ ɑ ɑ]. Practice until you like it.

Already you can read and write something: [h ɑ h ɑ hɑhɑ hɑhɑhɑ]:

Now or later at home,
Practice in your journal, write [ɑ ɑ ɑ ɑ ɑ h h h h h ɑ h ɑ hɑ hɑhɑ].
Write [ɑhɑ hɑhɑ]:

Explain reading and writing:

• To write: say it slowly, separate the sounds, write each one left to right (Arabic, right to left).
  
• To read, see each letter, remember or look up the sound,
  
• join the sounds together in your mind,
  
• speak them all continuously in slow careful-sounding speech, then faster as you become comfortable.
  

Square Brackets

Write IPA inside [ ]: the brackets say "this is sound, not spelling". Always.

[- + h]: The Three Glottal States

See the Instrument, first row of three heads:

• Everyone has a head.
  Even animals have lips over a toothy hole for air to go in and out.
  In the throat is the voicebox or larynx, holding the sound-making glottis.
  Glottis has 3 states. The glottis can be (1) quiet or not.
  If not quiet, its sound can be (2) regular (vibration) or (3) chaotic (noise).
• [/-] voiceless (quiet)
  • Here nothing is happening, this [-] means Nothing Is Happening: no voice.

• [+/] voiced
  • Here something is happening, this [+] means that.
    Pinch your throat high and deep and talk or sing [so so so]
    What do you feel? Movement? Vibration? (Note to Teacher: when their eyes get bright, they got it.)
    We call this "Voice".

  • Of all phonetic features I use [+] and [-] only for voice; the rest are drawings and arrows.
    Linguists may say voiced and unvoiced or voiceless, or write [+voice] and [-voice].
    Tom Veatch's personal convention is to write [+/] for voiced, [/-] for voiceless; simple!

  • See [+/] all over the Instrument: those are voiced.
    • A vowel is voiced and open, it has no place. No location with constriction or action. The whole mouth is open and resonates together from glottis to lips: that's a vowel. Vowels are all voiced unless whispering.
    • A consonant is a sound with a location, and an action at that location. Consonants can also be voiceless like [p, s]: look for [/-] in a few rows.
• [h]:
  • [h] is the third state of the glottis: irregular, chaotic sound, or frication.
  • Frication is chaotic noise; blow air between fingers or in your fist.
  • Frication at the glottis has a special name, "aspiration", we write [h].

Teacher says: What is +? (Voiced) What does it mean? (action in larynx, vibration)
What is -? (Voiceless) What does it mean? (nothing is happening, no vibration)
What is h? (breath) Where is [h]? [haha, kha, gha, dha, tha, pha, bha]

Practise outside class with an app: Basic Symbols with Sounds.

Name vs Sound

• in English spelling it has a name from the ABC Song, the name is aitch.
• But the sound you hear is [hhh] (no vowel attached, that would be [hɑ] not [h]).
• Is there a [h] sound in "aitch". No. The name is not always the sound. So keep them separate: name vs sound.
• Letter names help us to talk about sounds, but sounds let us talk in the first place.

Vowels #1: [ə], vowel length, vowel heights

[ə]: Home for Vowels

Schwa is like home for speech. With no constriction or special movement; the vibration is equal, cross-sectional area is equal throughout. The mouth generally goes back to schwa after speaking, starts at schwa before speaking. Speech is basically actions and gestures that start from schwa, move away from schwa, and eventually move back to schwa. Even in Devanagari it is the default vowel, अ, [ə].

Length

So [ɑ] short, [ɑː] long. [u uː, i iː, o oː, e eː, ɔ ɔː, æ æː]. Teacher note: Demonstrate them all, repeating them; students should repeat with you for each one. Okay? They should nod if they got it, but you want to hear them say it. This is a good time fo everyone to pronounce all 15 vowels, before teaching all the symbols.

Height: three degrees of vowel opening

• Cover up the vowel letters (no cheating), show [+] and "open" drawings.
  What does this say? Voiced.
  What does this say? Arrow on jaw downward. Open mouth.

  Do them. Do both, yes actually open your mouth, yes make voice, without voice no sound.
  What did you do? [ɑ]
  Ask: Did I teach you or did you follow the drawings?
  Teacher note: Practice your performance until they say, The Drawings!

Teacher says: Observe the down arrow. This has a name, the name is "open". Where else is the down arrow, "open"? (Answer: e and o)

Three kinds of down-arrows: none [i u], regular [e o], and big [æ ɔ]. Linguistics calls these as degrees of opening or of height: high, mid, and low. Say them in order by height and feel the jaw open one step each time:

high vs mid: [i e i e] [u o u o]
high vs mid vs open: [i e æ i e æ] [u o ɔ u o ɔ]

Consonants #1: actions

What actions can you really do in your mouth? We will list the same things over and over four times. First: the possible actions are variations on closing and opening. Close-fully-then-pop-open, close-holding-nose-open, close-and-open fast (bouncing), nearly-close while blowing so it hisses, close or blow not quite that much (like a high vowel but at some location), close in the middle but not the sides. That's everything.

We discuss the actions, before any places. Actions are abstract but simple when taught first. These are things you can do with the tube of your mouth. Second: do each one with them; then of course they can:

• Stop: close completely, then open suddenly.
• Fricative: blow into your fist: a narrow path, noisy air.
• Flap: a ballistic bounce: the tongue thrown up to touch and bounce off once (multiple bounces: a trill).
• Approximant or glide: nearly closed; not enough for frication.
• Lateral: close in the middle with the tongue touching the top center at some point, but the sides stay open, as in [l] and Marathi retroflex [ɭ]. (The velar or "dark" [ɫ] of English "well" might not be a true lateral.)

Third time, let's look at the 6 action drawings, left side of page 2 of the instrument.
These have 6 names in English+Latin: nasal, stop, fricative, flap, glide, lateral (the nasal, the sixth, comes in Level 2 with its proof). (For Teachers: write these names on your Instrument.)
What is the meaning of each?
Let each student describe it to learn what is communicated by these drawings.
Praise, because whatever they say if it's bad it's Veatch's fault if it's good it's their credit.
Take this chance to learn to improve the drawings if needed.

Five of the six actions use a drawing of some kind of a tube (the nasal, is drawn with the nose and comes in Level 2). The tube represents the airway with air flow right to left, as in the drawing of the head.

In the middle of this tube is some kind of a doorway or closing or obstruction which might be your tongue or lips doing something for an audible effect at some location or other.

Each action could occur in each place, we say.

Fourth pass:

In the five actions five different kinds of obstructions make five different kinds of sound effects.

Stops

This action has a name in English, the name is "stop". (Hindi rok jao). What stops? Air flow.

Easy!

Fricatives

If you are going to teach this stuff, if the idea of frication cannot stick in your mind try instead remembering that the third action is [f, θ, s, ʂ, š, x], plus their voiced alternatives. Then you're set.

Flap

Approximant or Glide

Do I have to discuss [y] and [w]? Glide or Approximant means that there is a small opening, not so small that it hisses, but still quite small, and through this opening goes all the vibration and resonance of the vocal tract. These are actually nothing but extreme vowels [i] and [u], but languages use them for consonants. You might write [ɑi] or [ay] and the difference would be insignificant, or you might say conventional. Use either convention, both are available.

Lateral

Recognize "clear ell": [l], and Marathi retroflex ell: [ɭ]. To get American English properly youll also need velar or "dark" ell: [ɫ]. Practice practice.

For the teacher, about the drawings

My job here is to explain what each action is like, physically and how each drawing works.

The dashed lines on the downstream part of the tube after the doorway suggest the place could be at the lips and if so there is no downstream tube. In that case ignore dashed lines as imaginary. But in the other locations, the doorway is located inside the mouth, and the dashed lines indicate the entire downstream part of the tube after the obstruction out to the lips.

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Level 2: vowels forward vs backward; the five places by bursts, then nasals, tone, and CVC practice

Vowels #2: forward vs backward, at lips or tongue

We learn sounds in contrasts. Vowels come in pairs or triples that differ in one thing.

The Basic Vowels have three gestures (a.k.a. features or gunas but here, sets of arrows), one each for [ɑ], [i], [u].

We already did [ɑ], now let's do [u i u i]. Repeat after me [u i u i u i]. (Check everyone is doing it, encourage the shy ones to really do it, no, really.)

Do you notice the lips moving? Do the lips move forward and backward?
Teacher says: Which has lips forward, [u] or [i] ? (Note to Teacher: usually they guess right.)
So [u i] moves lips from forward to backward, do you agree?

What about the tongue can you tell the tongue moves backward and forward?
Teacher says: Which has tongue body forward, [u] or [i] ? (Note to Teacher: many guess wrong; to them I say, put a cracker in your mouth, then try [u i u i] and see what your tongue is actually doing. You will discover the tongue moves backward in [u] and forward in [i]. If prepared, pass out some crunchy garbanzo bean salt snacks.)

Everyone should be in agreement then, [u] to [i] is lips forward, tongue backward, to lips backward, tongue forward.

So, do you see that is what the arrows say? Look at the pair of drawings, what is the difference?

Teacher can use hands near face one in front representing lips and one to the side representing tongue, and show an iconic movement of hands apart with [u] and together with [i].

• Make [u], see that [u] is "tongue backward, lips forward" ("move both apart"). See the arrows. Imitate it. Create voicing. That is [u]. Or do [u], and see if you can persuade yourself that [u] has its lips forward and its tongue back.

• Make [i], see that [i] is "tongue forward, lips backward" ("move both together"). See arrows. Imitate, with voicing. That is [i].

Consonants #2: places

We show consonant location as five places by demonstrating with the voiceless stop bursts. Repeat until they do it too, then next, for each one, following the place drawings.

• Flip the page to the consonant/tone side.
  
• Say: 5 Places 6 Actions, sweeping finger over all column headings, all row headings.

Ask the students to listen as you produce voiceless burst sounds from each place of articulation, with finger moving to each Place drawings.

[p p p, t t t, ʈ ʈ ʈ, č č č, k k k]

Train by testing, with stop bursts

Teacher test in random order: burst 3x, ask student to point to the answer.
Repeat until stable: at least until they get "labial" from [p p p].

If they got all, explain what they have done. Teacher says: "You know all five places!"

The Nasal Proof: [m]

Make the mmmm sound (listen so everyone does it).
How long can you do it? As long as you want, right? mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm (Note to Teacher: make sure they got it.)

Teacher says: "Watch me stop it. Say mmmmm... and Pinch the nose." (Note to Teacher: watch them do it.)
So you cannot continue mmmmmmmmm when the nose is closed.
[m] requires the nose.

(If time, try with [n, ɳ, ñ, ŋ]. Is it true that they all need the nose open?)

So these require nose open because nose closed finishes them.

Because they need the nose, we call them nasals, in every place. Okay?

That is the first action, nasal. Now let us do the first letter [m].

Teacher says: In [m] is there voice? h,-,+? Wait for Yes. See [+] means voice.
In [m] is the nose open? Wait for Yes. See the drawing that shows Nasal.
In [m] are the lips closed? Wait for Yes. See the drawing means the place is at the Lips.

The nasals at the same five places

Can you see the arrows, produce the sounds, and percieve the sounds as being at those places?

[m, n, ɳ, ñ, ŋ].

Note to Teacher: test with random ones: is there voice, is it nasal, what is the place?

See the drawings, point at the place for [m, n, ɳ, ñ, ŋ]. Say each in multiple syllables with schwa: [mə mə mə], [nə nə nə], [ɳə ɳə ɳə], [ñə ñə ñə], [ŋə ŋə ŋə].

Teacher says: "Now you know [m, n, ɳ, ñ, ŋ], all the places, and one action."
Finally, train by testing with the nasals in pairs, exactly as with the bursts.

Location or Place:

labial vs dental: [m n m n] (not too fast)
dental vs retroflex: [n ɳ n ɳ] same as [d ɖ d ɖ]
retroflex vs palatal: [ɳ ñ ɳ ñ] same as [ɖ ǰ ɖ ǰ], [ʈ č ʈ č]
palatal vs velar: [ñ ŋ ñ ŋ] [č k č k] [ǰ g ǰ g]

nasal vs stop: [m b p] [n d t] [ɳ ɖ ʈ] [ñ ǰ č ž š], each 3 to 4 times

The 4 tone marks

Here, I am satisfied if you simply recognize the phonetic values here: say some vowels each with high, low, falling, rising, see that each vowel can have each tone separately.

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Practice: CVC reading and transcription (voiceless stops plus h and any vowel)

Teacher can ask everyone to write following an example, later by their own opinion, and for each to read Teacher's writing aloud too.

Level 3: the vowel triangle and the lax vowels; the rest of the consonants, easy to hard; CVCVC practice

Vowels #3: the vowel triangle, then the lax vowels

First the whole vowel triangle: the corner vowels and the vowels between them, each in its place.

Then the lax vowels [ʊ] (as in "put"), [ɪ] ("bit"), [ɛ] ("bet") and [ʌ] ("but"). Each is a reduced gesture toward a vowel at the edge of the triangle, and is evidently a version of it: [ʊ] of [u], [ɪ] of [i], [ɛ] of [e], [ʌ] of [ɑ]. Teach each by contrast with that vowel: [u ʊ], [i ɪ], [e ɛ], [ɑ ʌ ə].

Consonants #3: the rest, easy to hard

Teach the rest of the consonant table in four groups, easiest first:

1. Native: the sounds the learners already say every day. In South Asia start with the retroflex column, then the voiced and voiceless pairs at each place (the drills below).
2. Known-foreign: sounds they know from words of other languages: Marathi [ɭ], English [ɚ], [θ], [ð], Farsi [æ] and [ɔ], Farsi [x] and [ɣ] as in [xɑːn] (khan) and [ɣələt] (galat), the hacek palatals [č š ž ǰ], [h] for aspirated stops.
3. Learned-unperceivable: sounds they have learned to say but do not yet hear apart: [v, w], [s š ʂ].
4. Unlearned-unperceivable: European [ʀ], English dark [ɫ].

How to make each of groups 2 to 4 is in the table of difficult consonants below.

1. Native: the drills

Actions are 6. Point the finger down the retroflex column pronouncing each one: [ɳ, ɖ, ʈ, ʐ, ʂ, ɽ, ɚ, ɭ].

Compare [p,k], what is different (place) what is same (stop, voiceless).

Place and action drills

Now try all actions at labial place m p b f v w.
Do you agree all are labial? (Fricatives have labiodental and interdental locations also.)
First review the idea of place with [m, n, ɳ, ñ, ŋ]: at velar place, say [ɑkɑ ɑgɑ ɑŋɑ]. Close eyes, repeat, watch your tongue, same place!
at dental place say [ɑnɑ ɑdɑ ɑtɑ ɑlɑ], close eyes, repeat, watch the tongue. Are they in one place? Yes.
at lips say [ɑmɑ ɑbɑ ɑpɑ ɑwɑ]. Same location? Yes.

Same location but different action!

Teacher says: In one place we have [kə gə ŋə], what are the actions?
Are [kə] and [gə] different by voiced unvoiced? Yes.
Compare the voiced and voiceless stops in pairs each at a single place, training by testing

Different from [ŋə]? Yes, [ŋə] is nasal.
What is the action for [g] and [k]? See the drawing, with airway closed, suddenly open it.

Does it create [g] and [k] when voiced and voiceless?
Note to Teacher: watch them try, see, think, absorb, accept, use this.

Teacher says: Can you do a stop at the lips? Voiced and voiceless: [b, p].
Can you do a stop at the teeth? Voiced and voiceless: [d, t].
Can you do a stop farther behind the teeth? Voiced and voiceless: [ɖ, ʈ].
Can you do a stop at the palate? Voiced and voiceless: [č, ǰ]
Can you do a stop at velar place? Voiced and voiceless: [g, k]

Teacher says: "It's time for practice, then a break, then later we can do more explanations."

Practice time

Practise outside class with an app: write what you hear.

Now write [nɑ, nɑmɑh, hɑm, mɑːhɑː, nɑːn, nɑːnɑː, mɑŋ] (name of [dɑːl]), [mɑn].

Practice any local or English word, students' choice (any CVCVC combination): one student asks for a word, everyone hears it, writes it, discusses it, and reads it back.
Now write [nəməsteː] ...
Look for some words on signs which you can say now and write them for practice.
Keep looking at signs and reading everything you can.
Even if little comes, every time you recognize a letter it is progress.
Enjoy the curiosity and your sense of progress!

Note to Teacher: the difficult consonants

The stories behind these sounds are under Level 5: Notes on the difficult consonants.

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Level 4: review of vowel triangle and difficult consonants; test

Vowels: review the whole vowel triangle from Level 3. Consonants: review, practise and test the locally difficult consonants (the list is in Level 3): read and speak, hear and transcribe.

Practise inside class with words volunteered by a student. Stand up, say it, half write it, the other half reads it, the first is judge of correct pronunciation.

Practise outside class with an app: more sounds, in words.

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Level 5

The rest of actual IPA is left out of the Instrument. Vowels whose lip-rounding goes against the usual pattern: tongue forward with lips forward, [y] and [ø] (French, German), and tongue back with lips back, [ɯ] and [ɤ] (Japanese, Korean, Turkish). And the adjuster marks (diacritics): small marks added to a letter to change it a little, such as breath after a stop [pʰ], a nasal vowel [ã], and length [aː]. Or raised, lowered, fronted, backed, according to their diacritics. The full chart is at the International Phonetic Association.

This course's letters and the official IPA

This course writes some sounds the way American linguists have long written them (the Americanist tradition), not the way the official IPA chart does. Both are in use; a learner who reads one can read the other with this table.

Practise outside class with an app: write what you hear, harder.

Tone languages

Among tone languages we can say Chinese understands [ma] in four ways depending on tone, and they call their tones by number, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. Cantonese and Vietnamese have 6 tones. Thai has 5 but writes 3 in its spelling. If you have a tone language you will probably have to figure it out for yourself.

These 4 patterns may be useless in two ways.

First, your language may not be a tone language. Then please ignore these marks. In this case, please be happy since instead of "colon" [:], you can use the macron overline diacritic to indicate length, which is common in writing non-tonal Indian languages in a Roman- or English-like alphabet.

Second, even if your language is a tone language, very probably, it does not use these particular tones. In that case please invent some diacritics to put on or near the vowels or syllables. (IPA likes to tone-mark the first sound, usually a consonant, in any syllable, but that is dumb because in spectrograms you can see that actually it is the vowel that carries almost all of the tone, so why tone-mark letters that don't carry tone?!).

In short with tone you can do what you want, and these diacritics are some hints about some things you can do. Do what makes sense to you, and maybe cooperate with others to form a consensus on what works for everyone.

If possible I'd prefer to skip the tone marks and instead use punctuation like [?,.] for:

Notes on the difficult consonants

English got a pair of sounds from the invading Vikings which is written with greek theta [θ] and norse thorn [ð]. These are not Hindi [th] which is a stop plus h aspiration. They are linguo-dental fricatives, and easy and fun to make. Stick your tongue through your teeth, then blow with or without voicing. It works!

In Sanskrit there were three fricatives with the tongue: one more dental, one more retroflex, and one more palatal, all three different voiceless fricatives, but in every descendant language they have merged into either two categories or one, and we could put these symbols in different places. For me I like [s, z] for dental/alveolar, and [š ž] for the palatal mark reminding me of the palatal glide [y]. Sorry I don't like Leibnizian tall S [ʃ] for [š], it seems like a special occasion letter, for a regular daily sound, but some phoneticians prefer it.

Finally many languages lack the velar fricatives [x] and [ɣ]. Hindi and Urdu speakers already have them from Persian words like [xɑn] (khan) and [ɣələt] (galat), so start there. Ignore them if you don't have them, but if you want to be a phonetician you should learn a little German or something which has them.

Frication can be very loud [s] or very quiet [θ] or deep in the mouth [h] or out at the lips [ɸ]. [f] is often indistinguishable from silence, inaudible. In language, we teach ourselves to move our tongues to make this narrow path and we raise the pressure from the lungs to make such turbulence, and a few different such whistle-like sounds can be made, not exactly in the expected places to match the stops and nasals, but near enough to identify with those places.

In the dental-alveolar region it is written with a flap symbol [ɾ] but strict IPA actually uses the [r]. Behind that in the retroflex region, we use the retroflex indicator, a long tail with a hook, attached to the IPA [r].

If there is more than one contact, a multiple-bouncing-ball, the name for that is "trill" as in certain birdsongs, but I write that as if with a single flap. I am open to correction.

There is another place of articulation for the flap, which is velar, or uvular. Actually it is a uvular trill, written with a capital R in the IPA. I cannot do it without frication, but native speakers of French and German do the most amazing job of it. Listen to Edith Piaf singing Je Ne Regrette Rien and try it yourself. Meanwhile I don't know if anyone else will need [ʀ], but it is there since it is part of IPA.

A "flap" sound is the most typical sound for the various sounds we refer to as "r" or "R" (although in US English "r" is normally pronounced [ɚ] which I called a glide in Veatch 1991.

But in two weird languages which happen to be politically important, American English and Beijing Mandarin Chinese (and in nowhere else in human language as far as I know), there is a retroflex approximant or glide sound [ɚ] which the rest of the world finds impossible to pronounce. So if you need this IPA letter for any other language please let me know, I will be very excited. On the other hand I wrote a lot of my thesis about [ɚ] so I couldn't exclude it without a twinge in the heart. Really it is an amazing sound.

And there is the so-called velarized ell, which is what I'll use for American English velarized "l" as in "well". In my thesis on the Chicago dialect I have made hundreds of measurements of the sound of this "l" as in "well"; it can swallow the following "e" and together they can become indistinguishable from [ʊ].

But consider Polish, which has palatalized and velarized laterals. I didn't include a palatal lateral, sorry. If you need it let me know. But I think all these could go by "l" without any trouble, so fewer options is less trouble for beginners and here is the balance I have struck for now. Hence laterals.

English ell is rarely this nice clear [l] which has tongue tip closure and no tongue-body retraction, as in Jamaican Creole [l] or Hindi [l], so don't get excited if you are an English speaker. There is a retroflex l in vedic Sanskrit and some descendant languages such as Marathi, so that's there with the retroflex tail.

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Level E: English

English steps:

• 1) Be comfortable reading/writing IPA via Levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. Pass this. Now you are standing on the ground and know what you're talking about.

• 2) Learn the Easy Bit of English Spelling, Good Phonics.
• 3) Then look at Bad Phonics (sidebar) to persuade yourself that pronunciation guesses are indeed wild guesses - temporary ONLY and urgently to be replaced through constant search for a reliable pronunciation.

• 4) Then learn words:
  • Discover IPA in the dictionary -- for the pronunciation!

  • Every word is triple by content and confidence. Know the meaning, the spelling AND the pronunciation. And, did you guess or you really know.

    For every new word:

    • Remember what you know or merely guessed
    • Remain curious, to replace guesses with trustworthy truth.

  • Learning this way, you are on solid ground and can build a castle of knowledge which will stand for a lifetime.

  • Spend your life learning new knowledge and words in this way.

English vs IPA

Use Good Phonics (see the sidebar) where possible.

Even Bad Phonics with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 ways to say any given letter or two, at least reduces the field of random options.

But the rest is indeed guessing. For a decent guess you can use IPA pronunciations to read English text. English letters are already a part of the IPA which re-uses the whole Roman alphabet, so you CAN use IPA IPA sounds for them. That usually comes out slightly wrong, and often really terrible, but surprisingly often, IPA gives a serviceable, temporary guess. It's okay to start, if you will just remember this was a guess, a normally-wrong, often terrible, wild, wild guess. Finally, then, just take responsibility to listen for that word being pronounced by a trustworthy model (or look it up!), and THEN you will always know exactly how you can say it, for the rest of your life.

Because one instance proves a possibility, so you can actually learn 100% truth of a certain kind of truth from a single case. You CAN pronounce this word this way, is acceptable statistical and scientific inference from a SINGLE trustworthy instance.

Now, to talk ABOUT letters and spelling, you can use the English letter names if you and your listener know them.

I really apologize for the mess of the English language, which is the cause of all this complexity. I wrote 330 pages for a PhD dissertation named "English Vowels", so I have suffered more than you will.

Educated English speakers will be confused by IPA sounds when they expect a letter name, so someday you can learn them: sing the ABC song, watch YouTube and sing along. Then you can give those English speakers an easy time by using their arbitrary and nonsensical names.

May I share something fun? As mentioned the NAME for the letter "e" is pronounced [iː]. This came from the long history of the English language, over 600 years ago, in a sound change called the Great Vowel Shift. Someday, please read about it and then English spelling will make a little more sense.

Okay, enough. Conclusions:

To speak out loud, you may use the IPA letter SOUNDS as temporary guesses.

To write clearly to confused readers you may write with double quotation marks for English spelling and brackets for IPA as in

"Veatch" |-------|

[vi:č]

[] means Phonetic Transcription. [] means IPA. We can also use // for language-particular sound transcription, but we start with [] which is the reality and foundation.

If you write phonetically without []'s people think you are uneducated or crazy. But as soon as you use [] it means you are a scientist, an expert; you actually know; whereas, other people are guessing. A 5 year old writing without []'s will make the parents question the teacher's sanity, but with []'s they will be Very Impressed with their child's brilliance, depth of linguistic understanding, and scientific accuracy. Always use []'s for phonetic writing, so people know how to read it.

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To learn more

Know why:

Transactions:

Write receipts, exchange agreements, contracts. Your will after your death. Put your name on your stuff. Buy and sell with a written receipt or a contract: write it down now to defend it later, and own what you own.

Where are you? Directions, signs, maps say where.
Read signs everywhere, read anything you can.

Write letters to your people. Your will after death, a family history so that your descendants won't forget you. Family recipes. Post signs for others to read. Write poetry, stories, your special knowledge: share it!

How to Learn

The reason babies can learn language so quickly is that it is so easy to speak to them at their level. Also their utter lack of comprehension, the low expectations, and the great clarity when they actually learn something new, these all support the adult in talking to them in the simplest language within the edge of their knowledge where babies know almost everything already.

The path to excellent reading -- comfortably as if talking -- is to read and read, and keep reading forever, going from easy to difficult material.

An excellent reader moves the eyes freely around the text, picking up definite clues from unambiguous letters and known words and combining clues with knowledge of context and activities being described.

An excellent reader extracts clear unambiguous information by scanning for those definite clues, then inferring what else must have a certain meaning for the whole to remain meaningful. Then even the unknown becomes known because its meaning is evident from the context.

Be patient and curious; tolerate your own partial ignorance as you learn. No one can know or learn everything, just as YouTube receives more than 24 hours of uploaded video each day, so no one can watch everything. Still, you can learn anything you want. I encourage you to keep using what you know, keep learning new ideas, words, scripts, and languages.

Mine are Hindi, Sanskrit, and English, and any language of the place that I am staying. Maybe you could learn those.

Don't limit your future based on your present. Learning builds upon itself so if you keep learning there is no upper limit to your personal knowledge and capabilities.

My gift to you is the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: learn it, share it, and ask those who learn it to share it (the reasons are in the Introduction).

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Teacher Training

Approach

 
Respect: To make the listener comfortable when we talk about literacy you may need to say these things:

• Illiteracy is not shameful.
  
• You are intelligent, hardworking, earnest, respectful and respectable.

• But if we look forward, life can be better in the future with literacy.
  
• Let's build a better future together, student and teacher.

• It takes paper and pencil and light and quiet and something to write on.
  
• It takes time, effort, attention, practice.
• In a week or a month, see if you are unhappy.

• If they don't want it, don't give too much!
  
  • Reflect on yourself: is their refusal from your disrespect or any sense of superiority?
    Fix your approach to love and respect.
    
• Schedule time and place to return and repeat and review and expand.
  This sets them up for success: a form of love.
  
• If a session has gone too long, give a break until they are ready, next minute, hour, day, week. Not more than a week.
  
• If delay continues long, bring them back to the material. Review is helpful, several times review, several times practice. New information should be reviewed after 15 minutes, an hour, later in the day, tomorrow, after a week. Find a way for the student to talk about it themselves, so you can see if they got it right and so that it connects to other knowledge and stick. Give a chance to practice, both reading and writing, as per Level 1. Then it will stick.

• Break knowledge into pieces small enough to fully accept while wanting more.
  
• Keep watching their interest level and their understanding, keep adjusting to get both.
  
• While empowering their future self, don't make them suffer on the way. Already they are trying!
  
• When they get something, do something right, praise them!
  
  • Double the experience emotionally and intellectually with praise, saying what they did.

Motivations

• Travel (signs, directions, maps) to arrive and know it, not to be lost or captured.
  
• Messages (far, future, past) to give and receive (your people far, the future unborn, the past grandparents or teachers). This message.
  
• Transactions (receipt, exchange agreement (contract)) to avoid deceit and fraud: so you really own the result.

• Travel. Illiterate women asking directions because they cannot read signs are vulnerable to misdirection, capture, and enslavement. How will she ever escape and arrive home without reading signs?!

• Does anyone have loved ones far away? Who? If you can read and write you send a message, this one is sick, that one is born, everyone is healthy. Without reading/writing by yourself you depend on the discretion of others: where is your privacy? What if your message is difficult or shameful, but you want their love, support, advice, and help. Learn together, then each can read and write for yourself.

• A written message can be saved, becomes immortal.

  Write to your unborn children or grandchildren, what is your message. Read from your ancestors or wise teachers, what they want you to know.

• To buy or sell invites fraud and abuse. During the exchange, write and keep a receipt: when, who, what, how much. Then no one can say price or quantity or description is wrong. Agree for a future exchange, in writing. Written agreed terms cannot be changed without written agreement, and a judge will also agree: only if you have written evidence.

• In Doiwala on the street I gave it to a nice mother of grown sons, who complained her sons were unmarried. I said, marriage is more difficult for the illiterate. Yes.

  It means that one is more capable in everything with the ability to read. Maybe the message is a job instruction. What job can you do without reading?

Scripts

Here we have 3 Scripts: Devanagari, English, Phonetic. What shall we learn first?

The first step needs to be simple, practical, accessible and safe.
Our principle must be 1 sound 1 letter. If not 1-1 then it is...

• no longer simple but complex,
• less practical because harder to learn,
• inaccessible when even the so-called rules are wrong, and
• unsafe because you cannot trust how to say the letters.
  

Teacher's checklist: before, during, after

• First, identify potential students who cannot yet read.

• Pick a venue: wherever they are, a home, a shop, a temple, a schoolroom, the roadside; anywhere two people can sit with the Instrument between them.

• Agree a schedule: perhaps 6 classes of 30 minutes (see the Structure), and the review times (15 minutes after, an hour after, the next day, a week later).

• Meet them anywhere, or invite them, especially in groups, to come together and learn basic phonetic literacy.

• Greet them with respect and love; ask if wanted; explain why.

• Show three or four cards with Devanagari, 3-4 with a Roman letter.

• Ask: What is this? Write their answers with their names; No is a good answer. Did they know the letter by name or sound?

• Write their name and these pretest results with date and location. Pretest results are the Most Important.

• After each level, show the same cards again and write the results beside the pretest, so the gain is plain to see.

• Collect and periodically send those results directly to us at Phoneticians.com, so we can add them to the scientific data on this. If you need help putting them together, your Master-Teacher will help.

• If they can sing ABC, and name each letter, and write their name, and read signs and receipts and to-do lists,, they don't need this alphabet, they already have some basic functional literacy, at least. But find out if parents siblings all can read also, if so teach the illiterate one with the literate one watching over, and invite the literate one to help tutor the illiterate one later at home, make them practice, quiz their understanding.
• A person who names the Devanagari but not the English/Roman letters, can benefit from IPA for signs and a first pass of basic reading/writing of English including Hindi in (mostly) Roman letters.
• Before class: find or write down your own local example-word list: 3-4 words the students already know by sound (a local "A-for-Apple"), so that their first successful decoding is a word they recognize. The instrument itself carries no word-examples or technical terms to confuse any learner anywhere. Examples are the teacher's job, done in the local language.

• Give out the instrument, one to every person.
• From the start give out a practice writing notebook and a pen or pencil to each student, since then they can really practice immediately. This is our gift to them, and they can start drawing Smiley Faces, immediately. Draw a sample and say Copy That; encourage anything they do, and more practice till they like it. After they did a smiley-face, they already showed they can do O and U and i which are parts of a smiley face, so they can have confidence to do the rest.

• Teach them the Lessons, starting at Level 0, voiceless, voiced, then aspiration ([h]) then brackets (around whole words or utterances not every letter), then [ə] then [ɑ] then [ː] (length) then [h ɑ h ɑ] = [hɑhɑ]. Keep going, give breaks, practice, use it on their own language, any word or any recorded audio of one syllable. We want them to be able to write whatever they hear using IPA, so practice a variety. Add Advanced symbols as needed, one by one.

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Master-Teacher Training

Master-Teacher Expectations

• Strategy. See How It Spreads above.
• Language Competence. I write this in English, so the first Teachers might also speak English, but see the Hindi version; more languages later.

Master-Teacher Tasks

• (1) Finding potential Teachers. Probably they can read but possibly only using phonetic literacy. I have told everyone I teach that if you understand something, then you can teach it, so as soon as you understand it, you are now its Teacher, so please give it to others, mothers, sisters, anyone you meet who is illiterate.

• (2) Motivating potential teachers. It won't make much money; in fact it costs about 20 rupees a student (see Money and Career above).

  The motivations are idealism and meaningfulness. To do this work is to have a meaningful life. Aren't we idealistic? Don't we want to help our fellow humans. It seems to me that everyone wants to help the illiterate, actually. What is the value of your life if not the beneficial impact you have on others? Think: if you can teach others, how many lives will you change? They will learn, their life is better; they will teach others, the family's life may improve, even their village or their country. Don't you want a meaningful life? Meaningful means Benefax, doing something that goes beyond yourself and goes and goes, indeed it can also go even beyond the people you meet directly. Then the positive impact of your limited life is unlimited.

  Do you know my feeling? How I feel when I think about just the possibility that many people will be empowered by literacy through this work? It overwhelms my heart and tears come up, just think how much fraud and abuse will be stopped, how many loved ones will be in touch together, how people will travel fearlessly in this world, which could not happen for them before, because now they can read even just a little bit to recognize some signs. I am very grateful and humbled, the whole thing is far far beyond me.

  So you may also have that feeling: who will you teach, how will it improve their lives, how far and how many? This work offers you a chance to have a very meaningful life.

• (3) Qualifications. These are required but hardly limiting: most people are qualified. Becoming a Teacher requires knowledge not position or degree: it does not require college, or high school, or elementary school. It does not require competence in a particular prestigious or major language; being a native speaker of any language is enough.

  While there is a spectrum in that a college educated linguistics major might be the Very Most Qualified potential Teacher and Master-Teacher. I was a linguistics major. Perhaps best if they have had a class in Phonetics, but this is not necessary; these materials by themselves also teach a lot of Phonetics.

  A teacher should be a native speaker of some language, competent in accurately producing a useful inventory of distinct sounds of language. A teacher should possess a proper operating mouth, tongue, jaw, larynx, lungs, and nose. A teacher will be able to point a finger to each letter while saying its sound.

  Teachers should be able to communicate to some degree with their Students, but perhaps not very much. See useful vocabulary as an example.

  Teachers should feel love and respect for their students (see Approach above).

  Teachers should think about how to make learning easy and fun and meaningful and useful for their students, so that they can pay attention for long enough and the material can actually arrive and be retained and used. A Teacher must know it is not just the knowledge that is transferred but also the skill, which requires practice and examples and actual use in reading actual language in their local environment.

• (4) Master Teacher's Work: Teaching Teachers. A student who has learned IPA and passed the test of an IPA Reader and Writer with unknown content, can become a teacher of IPA. Does the student meet the qualifications above? The Master Teacher should explain them, and prove they know what is expected by asking them to explain it back in their own words. Go through the Levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and E together with the student-teacher performing the task of explanation to other students, to your satisfaction: will they really communicate the ideas.
• (5) Testing Teachers. The Master-Teacher should also Test what the Student-Teacher knows, and can do, and whether they are effective in communicating it to Students so that Students actually learn it. Know the check-list: The Student Teacher must be responsible for Students' competence in at least producing and labelling each sound in the chart, and should record them in a teaching log. Do the check list: The Master Teacher must observe the Student Teacher teaching at least one student, and check that every part of the various levels is remembered, explained so the student can understand it, and recorded on the teaching log. Achieve success: Quality control two generations down, is also the Master Teacher's job. The Master Teacher's responsibility is not just that the Student Teacher knows something, but that the Student Teacher produces successful Students. The Master Teacher must test the Student-Teacher's Student, to see that they did properly understand, and can read and write novel examples using the various IPA letters. Until the Master Teacher tests the Student Teacher's Students and prove that they learned from the Student-Teacher, that Student-Teacher cannot yet be considered a qualified Teacher.

• (6) Collecting results and reporting. Collect what your Teachers record (the pretest and the after-each-level results from the Teacher's checklist) and send it to us (at tom@phoneticians.com), for quality control and strategic planning.

Master-Teacher To Master-Teacher Transmission

Become their colleague and advocate. You know them, what do they need to become responsible, successful, effective? Just think about it and I'm sure you will figure out what is needed. Do the right thing.

Connect them with Phoneticians.com where we will be testing Students, Teachers, and Master Teachers on their relevant capabilities, so we can certify folks at each level.

Ask them to collect data and return it to our central repository where statistics are kept to show the spread and progress and effectiveness of this work.

If your student-teacher knows the material, authorize them to teach it. Why shouldn't a child be able to teach his or her parents and grandparents what they learned? Will it benefit the recipient? If so, we should encourage it. But also point out the responsibility of a teacher to know their material and speak the truth, not to exaggerate or oversell or lie.

Also please try to be available to advise them as they may encounter difficulties. Share what you learn with the rest of us as well. I consider this a learning community, so let us help each other to learn, and share best practices, and accelerate the good things that may come from our efforts.

And may the world be delivered from involuntary illiteracy.