<< DISPLAY UNIFON

keyboard entry:  funEmik transcripSun wiD u 40 karaktc
xgmentud alfubet tU Ad tEKcz uv rEdiN and rItiN

(download unifont to view) > funEmik transcripSun
wiD u 40 karaktc xgmentud alfubet
tU Ad tEKcz uv rEdiN and rItiN

Initial teaching alphabets allow students to learn as much in one year as they traditionally do in three.        Pitman's i/t/a accelerated code literacy but failed to accelerate traditional literacy.  Pitman transcribed a traditional basal reader series designed to teach word recognition. Students read the transcribed text twice as fast as traditional text. (an unexpected finding?)  However, even after 2 years, half of the students were unable to spell unfamiliar words using the i/t/a code. Altho they could identify many whole words, they had not overlearned the code.  If the goals it to be able to recognize traditional spellings, it is counterproductive to spend much time reading whole words in a different code.

Many advocates of Unifon think that transcribed readers are needed.  I think their usefulness would be limited and if used might be confusing to half of the new learners.

After 3 months, all of the Unifon students could spell (encode) any word they could pronounce because the Unifon writing to read approach emphasized this skill. Unifon words could be read as a string of sound signs so transcribed newspaper articles could be read aloud with the same understanding as when the article was read aloud by someone else. Going from reading an upper case code to reading comic books is not that big of a jump.  By the end of one school year, preschoolers in the University of Chicago Lab School project were reading standard upper and lower case text at a 3rd grade level.  

Code literacy is quick because there is so much less that needs to be learned.  Memorize 40 sound signs and you have it.  To achieve the same level of performance with traditional spelling you would have to learn 128 symbols each with an average of 2 pronunciations each.  There is only one way to spell the /ü/ sound in true in Unifon.  In the traditional writing system there are over 18.

 Code literate kids can decipher traditionally spelled words as easily as you can decipher the unifon code.  Unlike the list above, these words do not look much like their traditional equivalents.  This list of key words covers most of the long vowels.  The obscure vowel in hook is short.  Schwa is short and free.

When the Unifon symbols are placed in a conventional correspondence table, some of the same symbols show up in two cells.  This is because Unifon merges the stressed and unstressed vowels rather than considering them as separate phonemes.  A phoneme has the capability of changing the meaning of a word. In English, stress is phonemic.  rebul rEbel is an example.  (more)

English has 14 uncombined vowels in most notations.  In Unifon,  there are only 12 uncombined vowels and some of the combined vowels are moved into the forefront.  I and Y are considered primary long vowels rather than a diphthong or combined vowels.  (chart: 14unifon2.gif)

IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet
To see an equivalent i/t/a chart:  www.unifon.org/~sbett/33v16-ita.gif     
If you are familiar with the IPA, then you can use this chart to decode Unifon.
The top line lists the symbol assignments for the short keys on the keyboard.
The bottom 3 lines list the symbols associated with the tall or upper case letters.

        
UnifonKipa.gif

http://www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/unifon-luvit.htm
http://www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/unifon-malone.htm

Can you read this?  The story is supposed to contain all the phonemes of spoken English.


Wall Chart picturable words with the sound sign

This wall chart by Scott White associates a Unifon symbol with a key word and an image. A as in Aprun (apron) or A as in  Ap (ape) D as in dog (dog) and dort (dart) G as in gUs (goose) but not jem (gem) Traditional Spellings: apron ant ball bat chair dog eagle egg grasshopper fish goose house igloo ice jacks kite lion mouse nail ring Only a few hard words here. Is orange  Orunj xrunj orinj Is it lIen lIon lIun ?  turtle could be tctil whale could be hwAl garage could be goruZ (UK) pronunciation.or  guroj

This charts lists all of the Unifon symbols.  The non-obvious keyboard equivalents are listed in the upper right of each cell.  Below the symbol there is a key word written in keyboard Unifon follwed by the Unifon characters when there is room.  On the line below, the traditional spelling is shown.  AND, Ap APE, xl ALL, ..... zip ZIP.  

Unifon was updated around 1980, The characters shown in a small purple box are from the earlier type design.   Any text may be converted to a pronunciation guide spelling at
www.unifon.org/convert.htm   http://66.41.61.116/UFLookup/UFXlate.htm

A 600 word conversion takes 40 seconds to transliterate.  On the converter page it will be displayed in the all upper case Unifont. To view this in a typographically pleasing font on other pages, you must download one of the new fonts:  unifonk05.zip.  (see also  www.unifon.org)

The 2005 Komic Unifon font by Ken Anderson is based on Comic Sans. The main change is that c is now assigned to a ligatured 3R. murder is written M3RD3R and keyboarded as mcdc. This means that error can be written as erc This is because classic Unifon does not have a unique symbol for schwa.  Wherever there is an "uh" sound, Unifon uses a *u.  upper=upc,  sofa=sOfu <soe-fuh>.

For more fun with spelling, try reading a description of English as it is spoken. In a pronunciation guide spelling, words that rime are going to be spelled the same.  phun for fun is a homophone in tradspel but is not a possibility in a phonemic, one symbol per sound, system.  

The case for Unifon  Literate adults when first exposed to a Unifon transcription think that they will have to learn to read all over again in order to decipher the alphabetic code.  Actually they only need to learn 17 new letter-sound correspondences and only a few of these are arbitrary assignments. unifont-sampletxt.gif

Lower case "aeiou" represent the short vowel sounds.  Upper case "AEIOU" represent the long vowel sounds.  Unifon, which means one sound, is also unigraphic.  This means that the traditional digraphs Sh, NG, Ch, and  Th are going to be reduced to one letter: <Sh> and <NG> become S and N.  <CH> becomes K, and <Th> is expanded to Dh and Th and reduced to D and T as in Da Tug for the thug.  The unstressed "uh" or schwa is assigned to a reversed E. <ee> = E on the keyboard and a crossed I in the display font e.g.,  sOsIctE  or simulated: SÓSÍ3TÉ  or if you have the unifont: a sOsIctE. (see converters)   

· Unifont download: unifonk05.zip
· www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/unifonk05.zip

Character sets and sound symbol correspondences
www.foolswisdom.com/~sbett/unifon-ipa-EN.gif

Missing Material:  The CBS TV show on UNIFON hosted by Charles Kuralt, interviewing John Culkin.  It was called “The Day They Changed the Alphabet”.  Date: ____________ If you have any leads on how to get more information, please contact someone at www.unifon.org or post it at unifon@yahoogroups.com

Unifon keyboard map:

Ynifon iz u fOnEmik nOtASun fOr umerikun ENliS. wcdz or speld az DA or prunqnst and prunqnst az DA or enkOdid. spOkun wcdz or rudUst tU A striN uv sqnd sInz. Ynifon haz 40 uv DEz. aftc lcniN Dem yU kan spel enE wcd yU kan spEk, Or sqnd qt enE Ynifon speliN.