Dyslexia: Phonics Alphabet A-Z Sounds for Children - Video

This video from helpingtogrow.com teaches the actual phonic sounds of the alphabet from A to Z.

The Role of Phonology 
In the world of dyslexia, it is necessary to return again and again to the very basics of phonics and “sounding out” words – even in adulthood, since reading fluency is often a lifelong problem.

The place to start is to learn the alphabet, not by the names of the letters, but by the sounds they make. Songs and videos with a phonetic alphabet like the one above are widely available.

The next step is to practice saying and memorize the most common words in the English language.

About 50% of all written material is made up of the 100 most frequent words, so reading fluency depends on learning words such as “the,” “no,” “on,” “like” and “open.”

For longer words, a student must learn to break down words into semantic or syntactic chunks. For example, an ending of “-s” or “-es” signifies a plural noun or a third person singular verb.

A prefix of “un-” indicates some type of negative meaning. If a person can learn to read and understand part of a word, then the rest of the word can be dissected, too.

Latin is sometimes recommended to high school students with dyslexia, because every word in a Latin sentence must be broken down into prefix, stem, infix and suffix to unlock the meaning.

Could a new phonetic alphabet promote Global Understanding?

Backers of a universal alphabet say it will make pronunciation easy and foster international understanding but can phonetic spelling systems really smooth the path to world peace and understanding?

You are in Vietnam and want a bowl of soup. You ask a local where you can get "pho". After momentary confusion you are handed a book.

It's the curse of phonetics. Pho was correct. But you failed to emphasise the vowel and so articulated in Vietnamese "copy" (of a book).

English has more pitfalls than most other languages. "Don't desert me here in the desert" is a classic example of the heteronym, words spelt the same but pronounced differently. Bill Bryson remarked in his book Mother Tongue that there were nine separate pronunciations of hegemony.

The argument over regulating spelling has been raging for more than a century. Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw were advocates - the latter leaving much of his will to setting up a new phonetic alphabet.

Today the cause has been taken up by Jaber George Jabbour, a Syrian banker living in the UK. He has set up SaypU, an alphabet with none of the indecipherable squiggles of traditional phonetic alphabets.

It contains 23 letters from the Roman alphabet as well as a back to front e. There is no place for "c", "q", or "x", which merely repeat sounds achievable by using other letters. The "ɘ" represents the soft "a" of "ago" or "about", a sound known as "schwa".

Jabbour was a frustrated traveller. He would see words on billboards, menus and street signs. But he didn't have a clue how to pronounce them.

When he first got to London he said Leicester Square as it is written - Le-ses-ter Square - receiving funny looks. Only later did he realise that it is pronounced "Lester".

These kind of misunderstandings create a barrier, he argues. In countries like India and China where the entire script is different it can be a wall between local and outsider.

A simplified universal alphabet would end not only misunderstanding. It would help foster peace around the world, he believes.

What is SaypU?

• Phonetic alphabet for writing all languages - name stands for spell as you pronounce universally
• Uses 24 letters from Latin alphabet
• Adds a reverse e - ɘ or Ǝ - for the soft "a" in "ago"
• Leaves out c (replaced with either k or s), q (k) and x (ks or gz)

More about SaypU

Dyslexia: Increasing the Letter Spacing Can Help Readability

A French-Italian research team, jointly headed by Johannes Ziegler of the Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Université) has determined that increasing the spacing between characters and words in a text improves the speed and quality of dyslexic children's reading according to a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

Mike BaBoon Design: Dr Seuss Alphabet

Depicted are: Aunt Annie (Dr Seuss’s ABC), Bartholomew Cubbins (The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins), the Cat in the Hat, Dave (Too Many Daves), Elephant-Cat (If I Ran the Zoo), Fox in Socks, the Grinch (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), Horton (Horton Hatches the Egg), Iota (If I Ran the Zoo), Jake the Pillow Snake (I Can Read with My Eyes Shut), King Bertram (The King’s Stilts), The Lorax, Daisy-Head Mayzie, North-Going Zax (The Zax), One Fish (One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish), Pop (Hop on Pop), Quilligan Quail (I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew), Rosy’s Red Rhinoceros (Dr. Seuss’s ABC), Sam-I-Am (Green Eggs and Ham), Thing One (The Cat in the Hat), Uncle Ubb (Dr. Seuss' ABC), Vipper of Vipp (Oh, the Thinks You Can Think), Wickersham Brothers (Horton Hears a Who), Little Cat X (The Cat in the Hat Comes Back), Yertle the Turtle, Zook (Butter Battle Book) 

Prints are available at http://society6.com/mbaboon/Dr-Seuss-Alphabet_Print

Mike BaBoon Design: Dr. Seuss Alphabet

A Hand-Painted Typographic Experiment by Tien-Min Liao

A Hand-Painted Typographic Experiment by Tien-Min Liao

Handmade Type is a typographic experiment by designer Tien-Min Liao wherein shapes painted on her hands are transformed by gestures to create letterforms.

However she gave herself a unique constraint: the painted figures on her hands for each individual letter had to be utilized for all variations of the letter, both upper and lowercase and sometimes even italic and handwritten. See more examples and the full alphabet over on Behance.

The Refracted Alphabet Video

Refraction - The Alphabet from Jesse Zanzinger on Vimeo.

A brilliant visual experiment by Jesse Zanzinger. Refraction: The Alphabet — a stunning visual exploration of the alphabet, rendered in type refracted through backlit signage lettering and images on an iPhone, with voiceover by the late and great Richard Pryor from his Sesame Street ABC. Beautiful.

The 3D Alphabet Book - Pop-up Letters

We’re suckers for a good pop-up book, but Marion Bataille‘s ABC3D takes it to a whole new level.

Slick, stylish and designerly, it’s hard to capture its tactile, interactive magic in static words — you have to have it in your hands to truly appreciate it.

The Washington Post hit the nail on the head:

Does for paper what Claymation did for mud. It’s a three-dimensional, interactive, cinematic treat for the littlest fingers right up to the oldest eye...

Visit the Publishers website or read more and see the illustrations and videos: The Alphabet Book Rethought | Brain Pickings

David Sacks' Alphabets

A new book by David Sacks offers much more depth than the designerly eye candy the genre lends itself to.

Alphabets: A Miscellany of Letters is an ambitious exploration of the pervasiveness of letters in everyday life, tracing our visual vocabulary to its roots in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Kanji characters and other ancient alphabets with rich illustrations, beautiful graphic design and typography, found objects, graffiti and more.

Read more at the Brain Pickings website