The basic difference between the two writing systems illustrated above is that the one on the right is predictable.  If you know the sound, you can look up the letter or letters to spell it in a simple sound-symbol correspondence chart.  In Spanglish or any phonemic notation, the symbols really are SOUND SIGNS.

The two charts provide all the information needed to understand any phonemic system.
 

Literacy has been defined as the ability to read and use written information and to write appropriately in a range of contexts. 

In order to read the pronunciation guide in a dictionary, one should have an introducton to phonics or the relationship between letter shapes and associated or correlated sounds.  There are a number of notations used for pronunciation guides.  The most common is some for of the IPA - international phonetic alphabet.

The problem with IPA is that it uses special characters and turned letters that are not available either on the keyboard or in Latin-1. 

Gettysberg address in Spanglish F 

          For scor and seven yirs ago aar faadhers brot forth on dhis continent a nu neyshen, concievd inn libberty and dedikeyted tu dhe propasishen dhat aol men aar criyeyted iequal. 

          Nau wi aar ingeyjd inn a greyt civel wor, testing wedhr dhatt neyshen or enny neyshen sow consievd and sow dedikeyted cann long indur. Wi aar mett on a greyt battelfield av dhat wor. Wi havv cumm tu dedikeyt a porshen av dhat field, az a fainel resting pleys for dhowz hu hir gav dher laivs dhat dhat neyshan mait livv. Itt izz oltugedher fitting and proper dhat wi shwd du dhis. 

          Butt, inn a laarjer sens, wi cannot dedikeyt - wi can nat consicreyt - wi cannot haalow dhiss graund. Dhe brev men, livving and ded, hu struggeld hir, hav consicreyted it, faar abov aur pur paur tu add or detract. Dhe werld will littl nowt, nor long remember, waat wi sey hir, butt it cann nevver forget wat dhey didd hier. Itt izz for uss dhe living, radher tu bi dedikeyted hir tu dhe unnfinnishd werk wich dhey hu faot hir hav dhuss far sow nowbly advansd. Itt izz raedhr for uss tu bi hir dedikeyted tu dhe greyt task remeyning befor uss - dhatt from dhiez onerd ded wi teyk incrisd devoshen tu dhat coz for hwich dhey geyv dhe lasst full meazher av devowshen - dhat wi hir haily rezolv dhat dhiez ded shall not havv daid in vein - dhat dhiss neyshen, unnder God, shall hav a nu berth av friedem - and dhat government av dhe piepl, bay dha piepl, for dhe piepl, shall not perrish from dhe erth.  [Spanglish-F]

Rules: a and e = @[schwa] when not followed by dbl consonants.  e is used with the syllabic vowels r l m n. a=@ everywhere else.  [er en em el otherwise a for @] These syllabic consonant letters can be used alone as semi-vowels, the @ simply shows stress as in herdr.  *other, laiten, bitten, butten, cammel, littel or littl.  In Egnlish, the o, i, and a is also used with the syllabic consonants which makes spelling difficult.  color = culler, caller=caoler, collar=coller. Exception - bicycle which beomes bicycl or bicycal or baisikkel.  because cel is pronounced sell.

Reading and writing are two different tasks.  Random spellings are OK in reading.  E and A endings can alternate since they both refer to the same sound.  Such ambiguity  is a  nuisance in writing where it is better to have one spelling per sound and only a few rules.
 

Any phonemic transcription system or pronunciation guide for English has to have a letter or letter combination in each of the 18 vowel cells above.  Most systems will fill 16 of them. 

The simplest system will have digraphs rather than trigraphs in the 12 combined vowel cells.  English needs one more character, a schwa for instance, to make this possible.  Spanglish uses [a] for schwa which means that the Italian [a] becomes [aa].  The alternative is the use of diacritics such as the mid-dot and the schwa-apostrophe.

SS differs from most alternative writing systems for English by having

1. a connection with  historical phonemic spelling
2. a way of consistently interpreting the saunds for each letter
3. a devolution path to the traditional writing system,  and 
4. an abbreviated form for rapid writing. 

A Fonimic Aelfabet for English The Saxon alfabet: 42 foniemz - 17 vaulz - 25 connsonants A e,i ago the AA aar caar A. AE aet catt AI 'y ais ice A.U aut out B bibb C cancel Ch tsh check D didd UR ER hurrder E. EA bread EI ey eys ace F fetch G gagg H. *hw hurrdl I. it tippy I IE .Y yield he J dzh judj jvj K  Qu kick quit L 'l littl M  'm maund N  'n nvn .NG singl O. otter O AO dog OW owe OY oi oyster P pick R.  'r roar S sisster Sh shipp T tot tott Th thh thy  thhai U. v upp urr .U. .W hwk hook U uu guuru V vatt W. hw winner X  ks tax tacks Y. Yu yess Z zipp Zh mezhr  vowels-white, semivowels-gray, consonants-blue, digrafs-dk. blue Irregular traditionally spelled words are italicized, eye-ai, out-aut,  *vowels when not followed by a vowel - wwln=woolen

Saxon Spanglish is not necessarily a spelling reform.  It can be valuable as a transitory or initial teaching alphabet without insisting that it is the only way to spell.  Unlike previousl i.t.a.'s Ss is not something that has to be discarded.  It can be a useful parallel system providing insights into the complexities of English spelling as well as a pronounciation guide. 

As a  phonemic transcription system, Spanglish respells over 60% of the words in English.  All phonemic transcriptions of English do this. The SS respellings are not so drastic as to require a key.  As indicated by the sentence at the top of the page, any literate person can read Spanglish.  European who are learning English as a second language will find Spanglish easier than the traditional writing system because it preserves the international letter-sound conventions. 

Saxon Spanglish is based on the Tenth Century Saxon alfabet shown above.   This is an augmented Latin character set with the ASH or ae being the most conspicous addition.  Saxon had 12 vowels compared to Latin's 10. 

There were long and short versions of each vowel sound.  [But not the ones that primary school teachers have used since the 18th Century].  Saxon did not code the two sounds in herder.  Like German, the e doubled as a mid lax vowel [schwa].  The unstressed  a also doubled as a mid lax vowel as in [ago] and [sofa]. 

conventional spelling
 

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm 
 

Consonants from the SAMPA page
The standard English consonant system is traditionally considered to comprise 17 obstruents (6 plosives, 2 affricates and 9 fricatives) and 7 sonorants (3 nasals, 2 liquids and 2 semivowel glides). 

With the exception of the fricative /h/, the obstruents are usually classified in pairs as "voiceless and "voiced", although the presence or absence of periodicity in the signal resulting from laryngeal vibration is not a reliable feature distinguishing the two classes. They are better considered "fortis" (strong) and "lenis" (weak), with duration of constriction and intensity of the noise component signalling the distinction. 

The six plosives are p b t d k g: 

 Symbol  Word   Transcription
 p  pin   pIn
 b  bin   bIn
 t  tin   tIn
 d  din   dIn
 k  kin   kIn
 g  give   gIv

The "lenis" stops are most reliably voiced intervocalically; aspiration duration following the release in the fortis stops varies considerably with context, being practically absent following /s/, and varying with degree of stress syllable-initially. 
The two phonemic affricates are tS and dZ: 

 tS  chin   tSIn
 dZ  gin   dZIn

As with the lenis stop consonants, /dZ/ is most reliably voiced between vowels. 
There are nine fricatives, f v T D s z S Z h: 

 f  fin   fIn
 v  vim   vIm
 T  thin   TIn
 D  this   DIs
 s  sin   sIn
 z  zing   zIN
 S  shin   SIn
 Z  measure   "meZ@
 h  hit   hIt

Intervocalically the lenis fricatives are usually fully voiced, and they are often weakened to approximants (fricationless continuants) in unstressed position. 
The sonorants are three nasals m n N, two liquids r l, and two sonorant glides w j: 

 m  mock   mQk      mock = maak  mok=mawk
 n  knock   nQk       nock = naak     nok=nawk
 N  thing   TIN        thing
 r  wrong   rQN       rong = rawng
 l  long   lQN            long = lawng
 w  wasp   wQsp     waasp = 
 j  yacht   jQt           yaat

Vowels
The English vowels fall into two classes, traditionally known as "short" and "long" but, owing to the contextual effect on duration of following "fortis" and "lenis" consonants (traditional "long" vowels preceding fortis consonants can be shorter than "short" vowels preceding lenis consonants), they are better described as "checked" (not occurring in a stressed syllable without a following consonant) and "free". 
The checked vowels are I e { Q V U: 

 I  pit   pIt
 e  pet   pet
 {  pat   p{t
 Q  pot   pQt
 V  cut   kVt
 U  put   pUt

There is a short central vowel, normally unstressed:   @  another   @"nVD@

The free vowels comprise monophthongs and diphthongs, although no hard and fast line can be drawn between these categories. They can be placed in three groups according to their final quality: i: eI aI OI, u: @U aU, 3: A: O: I@ e@ U@. They are exemplified as follows: 
 i:  ease   i:z
 eI  raise   reIz
 aI  rise   raIz
 OI  noise   nOIz

 u:  lose   lu:z
 @U  nose   n@Uz
 aU  rouse   raUz

 3:  furs   f3:z
 A:  stars   stA:z
 O:  cause   kO:z
 I@  fears   fI@z
 e@  stairs   ste@z
 U@  cures   kjU@z

The vowels /i:/ and /u:/ in unstressed syllables vary in their pronunciation between a close [i]/[u] and a more open [I]/[U]. Therefore it is suggested that /i/ and /u/ be used as indeterminacy symbols. 
 i  happy   "h{pi
 u  into   "Intu

NG
English may not have any words beginniq with 'ng', but other languages do. 
Ngaio  ['qaio'  in IanSpel] is is a Maori word, the name of a common NZ tree. 
Almost all Kiwis just say 'Naio' 

Tom said: Be vague in fonetic spelling.  Battle for dominance.  English is a fonetic disaster area.  Entlish is to be the basis of any new fonetic spelling system.  In English, the i must represent the sound in it.

From: "jimk" jimk@forcomm.net 
10 Jan 2001 22:47:51 -0500 

I suspect our communication problem started back when Johnson's crowd thought they had the English writing problem solved for all time by standardizing spelling on writing authority rather than on pronunciation. It was a huge step forward. 

The Dictionary showed (usually) only 1 correct way to write a word. The literary establishment had firm control. End of all arguments, except....the *write like you speak* people wouldn't go away. They became English linguists, keepers of the spoken language. The TO experts were right (no 2 people speak exacly the same way and lots of *English-speaking* groups have a hard time understanding each other), so English linguists have been studying pronunciation ever since without coming to an agreement on which speech habits will form the basis for a better writing system. 

They can't even agree on a simple list of what such a writing system should do better than TO. Now I maintain that, even though no one could express it at the time, a third solution to the problem of bringing the written language in standard synchrony was dimly recognized by Webster, perhaps Franklin, and maybe many others as well. They just didn't have the concept thought out and so did not have a word for it. They said the writing should match the speech sounds, but they argued as if everyone was saying about the same sounds when the actual fact was the opposite. Ever since, spelling reformers have tried to make words match sounds and spent most of their energy trying to convince everyone else that the sounds to be reproduced must be their own (or their choice, at any rate.) 

In the 1800s, someone named Kruszewsky is supposed to have invented the term *phoneme* to cover a concept that he had expounded. I do not have the paper and it wouldn't help if I did. Right at the start, linguists took over and defined phonemes as sounds though (sometimes) adding cryptically that they are not real (can you imagine a sound without a speaker and listener?), but ARE sounds none-the-less. Immediately, the original dilemma rears its ugly head. Every linguists can make a sound and claim it IS the phoneme by speaking words containing that sound. No definition, no standard; every one free to make his own claim. 

Can you define what yellow is?  A concept is a way of grouping dissimilar things together. No concept is real in the sense that you can see, hear, or touch it.  If someone has the same concept as you they will group things together the same way.  They will discriminate between exemplars and non-exemplars the same way.

Phonetics in the Jones tradition are based on culture free sounds. 

That is exactly where soundspel is stuck today; whose speech habits rule? The useful concept of abstract phonemes (mental, no need to mention sounds) is that they get into the brain as the ideas a child develops hearing various versions of phonemic sounds until he KNOWS that a word in his mind consists of a very specific sequence of those ideas, every time he hears a reasonable approximation of that particular sound sequence, he decodes it into the corresponding (commonly shared) phoneme sequence in his brain and thinks that word. Every time he wants to speak that word, he encodes it into that specific phoneme sequence, and his speech organs are directed to issue his particular version of the corresponding phonemic sound stream. 

I'm sorry this simple concept seems so complicated and that I have repeated it so many times. But I feel it is the only way I can answer your claim that Merriam-Webster has produced a phonemic dictionary. If it is a pronunciation guide that reproduces the guide in their recent dictionaries, then it is not a dictionary. 

Pronunciation guides always represent a range of sounds (the schwa, not a specific phoneme, is probably the symbol most frequently used) and often give foreign phonemes and references to regional speech ambiguities that do not represent phoneme differences. 

Pronunciation guides are a good place to start, but to turn a pronunciation guide into a useful phonemic dictionary (of the quality of M-W's 10th Collegiate) requires a great deal of additional research in the community to be covered and competent scholarly work to whip the data into useful shape. JimK (see below)

Jime writes AKSES has the number of phonemes needed to permit Merriam-Webster to convert their TO dictionary to a phonemic version. --- jimk jimk@forcomm.net 

Jim, Merriam-Webster already has a phonemic version. It is called the pronunciation guide. See above, the pronunciations cannot be simply copied in as entry words. Many can, but many require considerable data gathering and reviewuation before deciding which phonemes properly represent the commonly held phoneme sequence for a word. The on line Merriam Webster dictonary uses a non-IPA notation that is almost identical to keyboard unifon. This is different from their printed pronunciation guides and the complication of representing pronunciation rather than phoneme content perhaps is exacerbated by the limitations of the medium. I have found no need to refer to this source. One minor difference is the use of c instead of & for schwa. A-ei, E=ee, I=ie, O=oe, U=oo. The only problem with this phonemic notation is that it respells at least 60% of the traditional words. For most people, it looks funny. 

Any true phonemic representation (most easily accessible to children) will look funny to a TO-trained reader. Any *respelled* text that does NOT look funny is guaranteed to be just as hard or harder to learn than TO. Even with the greatest attention to picking the character set that gives the most compatible match with as many TO spelling as possible, TO is so inconsistent that 50 % of the words, at least, *look strange.* Perhaps 25 to 30 % will look *very strange.* "Dc zU had an Ap, an El, and an Oranj strIpd tIgcr." I guess that this says: *Dhu zoo had an aep, an eel, and an orenj striept tieger.* It illustrates that a dictionary used for teaching reading and writing to children and as a guide to careful and clear speech and writing for adults should not contain schwa notation in entry words. They should be made up of the phonemes most commonly used by careful speakers to create them in speech. Thus /u/ in *the* and /er/ as the final vowel in *tiger.* People natually enough change their speech habits to avoid sounding stilted in informal situations. Gus, 

[Steve] Good idea. We could build a multi notation converter by simply accessing different lookup tables. I don't think that anyone has come up with a phonemic system that works across languages. You can see the problem that Tom gets into when he tries to use his ears to transcribe phonemes in truespel. John Well's SAMPA site is the closest to achieving this. The kind of converters we have right now are not rule based. They are simply lookup tables. To convert, you simply lookup in one notation, e.g., TO and substitute the associated spelling: [look,lwk]. Thus, it is no harder to do this for an unsystematic spelling system such as cut spelling as for a systematic one. There is no easy way to build a conversion table for 50,000 words. I can send you the TO words, but you will have to indicate the rectified spelling for all of them. Have you checked out Stephen Bird's on line converter? It works for cut spelling and for ALC fonentic. It will soon work for Truespel I would like to get my hands on a more sophisticated engine such as the one that If we had the list of 50,000 in a phonemic spelling, then we could easily generate other spellings by search and replace. If & is schwa, replace with a in Spanglish. &merik& bedcomes amerika. The existing a's would first have to be converted to ae. There would be no easy way of doubling the consonant to show this sound. 

--- Gus gushs@gte.net wrote: Steve, I had a further idea. Besides going from the 'note' version to 'standard' English, what about a converter that also converts 'standard' to any version of your choice. In that way if you prefer to read in Spanglish, Truespell, AKSES, Iqliz or Eglsh (or even a foreign language - tho here we have grammatical problems with some, especially German's sentence structure, and also Japanese with the latter's 'honorifics'), you can do so. Then, switching from that version to 'standard', and back again to that version, a lot of misunderstanding can be cleared up. (But who's going to invent this converter?) Gus Gus wrote: Steve, You're right. There could be a converter if the notes were made on a computer. But the notes I've taken were handwritten. Even these could someday be converted tho by scanned recognition, if done legibly enough. And if not, by reading from the notes and telling the computer what was said. (But who is going to do any of this?) Gus 

Steve Bett wrote: Gvs, Yu aar rait, ther aar sevral veyraiytiz av spidraiting. They aol ignor short vaulz. Sam yuz the english vaul saundz, athrz yuzd continental valyuz. exampl U ar rIt, Dr ar svrl vriatEz v spEdrAtng. Itt izz very haard tu faind enything on shorthaend tudey. I think that rapid writing is something that should be explored because before anyone will buy into a code, it has to fill some need. I would think that we could build a converter for English that would convert rapid notes into standard English. 

--- Gus gushs@gte.net wrote: Steve, I'm not really advocating Eglsh. (I much prefer Iqliz.) It's just that that's where I think we're headed. People use bits and pieces everywhere. When I attended classes or lectures I used pieces when taking notes (it's ideal for that, in that you can write almost as fast as the speaker can talk). You mention speed writing, a means I'm not familiar with, unless you mean a type of ABC shorthand, of which there are many varieties. Eglsh isn't any of these. Eglsh uses 'standard' English spelling (not sounds as ABC or regular shorthand does, tho sound is definitely considered) as its guide, with no deviation (if possible). It just leaves out redundant and incorrectly pronounced vowels (especially those in the middle of a word) and consonants plus using more adequately the features on the American keyboard. Where this can't be done, or would be confusing, it reverts to the 'standard' spelling. Thus in using Eglsh as a medium of communication, existing 'standard' writing need not be discarded or made obsolete. Its use also, should make it easier for students to learn English, as English's ideograms would be shorter and easier to memorize. Sounds of various varieties (London UK vs Scots vs Irish vs New Yorker vs Southern US vs Australian vs India vs African vs Ebonics) would need less consideration - as the writing can still be understood - which is really what (written) communication's about. (To be adequate and honest, Truespel, Akses and others similar, would need configurations for all these varieties, if they are to do what they claim to do - reflect true sounds in their writing - which would tend to tear English apart, more than already, with the British and American varieties of spelling.) This is why I said earlier: 'I think we're all spinning our wheels' with our favorite methods (me too - with Iqliz). Among the shortcuts used in Eglsh are the following: a = a or an, b = be, c = can, d = do, f = for, g = go, h = who (alternately he also, if clear), i = I, l = will, m = am, n = in or no, o = of, r = are or or, s = as, is or us, t = to or too (two = 2), u = you. (Duplicates are spelled out in identified 'standard' if the results would be confusing.) 

Saxon Spanglish
in a netshell

Lis yur lizhur vihycal hir.  Stopp raiding yur baicycal [bicicleta] tu werk.  Aur reytz aar azz low azz enyhwer inn [yn] tha city.  hwot iz aol tha camowshan abaut

I am trying to come up with the most compact possible way to present an orthography.
The SSS is under the impression that it takes 12 pages to do this. Perhaps 2 pages would be sufficient if the orthographer would provide two correspondence tables. One for the vowels, and one for the entire alphabet.  Here I have tried to truncate 42 sounds into
a 40 cell matrix.  It almost works. 

I have messed up the chart by adding an alternate way of representing the sound.  Thus we can spell the ash sound as baet or batt.  The it sound as itt or yt.  The hook sound as shwd or shudd.  The pot sound as pott to distinguish it from the sound in "cost" which could also be written [caost].  In spanglish the o is normally somewhere between awe and a short owe sound. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I: and AI

[steve] Ther iz nathing wrong with using [ie] to spell /i:/.  It iz no mor ludicras than yuuzing [ee].  Ol it mienz is thaet yu musst yuuz [ai] for /ai/ as in TAI MAI SHU instead of TIE MIE SHOO.

[ze] The difrense is that wen an english speeking litrat peeple sees 'ee', she'l no it is /i:/. If she sees 'ie', she just wont no how tu pronounse it.

Of corse 'ai' is the moast lojical way tu spel that, but i'm quite sure it is not the moast poppuler. I'm finnishing my book with a kynd of weltish or deutshoranto, a kynd of english and german based esperanto (thair ar werds from 10 uther languejes tu, but i had tu make it basically german and english so that peeple can reed it), and at the end i rite 'rait' for 'right', and a german (wair ai is actually pronounsed /ai/) frend red /reit/. And didnt no wat it ment... he had 2 posibilities tuunderstand it with /ai/, english RIGHT and german REIT, but he red /reit/, wich wood be eventually english RATE, but he didnt think of it. He just thaut: i dont no enny english werd spelt RAIT.

[steve] [ee] is one digraph with no overlap in the traditional writing system so it makes sense to use it for /i:/.  Like most digraphs, [ie] corresponds to /i:/ only half of the time. It is not ambiguous in Spanglish, however. 

Thanks for your comments.

This may be a duplicate copy because my system crashed just as I was 
sending out the earlier one.

There is sufficient evidence to conclude that ITA did not prevent 
people from becoming good spellers.  There is also some evidence that the 
i.t.a. program did not provide much assistance for those who needed help 
coping with the complexity of the traditional spelling system [TS]. 

Those who developed the i.t.a. program underestimated the importance of 
having a method and underestimated the difficulty of the transition 
from a simple phonemic system with one or two spellings per pronunciation 
to a complex non-system with at least five spellings per pronunciation. 
Dewey claims that phonemes can be spelled an average of 14 different 
ways in the traditional writing system. 

Check out http://www.unifon.org/polyvalence.html

My statistic does not prove that an ITA is a good idea.  It does prove 
that those who argue that ITA training results in poor spelling 
performance need to come up with a better argument.  You are trying to 
establish a causal relationship between i.t.a. training and poor dictionary 
spelling. Thus, the burden of proof is on you.  You cannot just 
generalize from your own experience.

I think that the value of an ITA is to enable children to almost 
immediately use their 3000 word vocabulary to write with some confidence. 
ITA is a simple alphabetic code that can be taught in 2 months.  In fact 
any phonemic system can be taught in two months.  So it is a relatively 
rapid and painless way to get started.  The who point of an i.t.a. is 
not to overburden and frustrate the child with the illogical 
complexities of the traditional writing system.  It is the traditional system that 
inflicts pain and suffering, not the i.t.a. 

The pain that you encountered was with the transition.  The i.t.a. 
project never addressed this problem until rather late in the experiment. 

It should be pretty easy to determine what kind of errors can be traced 
back to ITA.  If someone spelled [show] as [shoe], it would be pretty 
clear that they had been influenced by i.t.a.  If they spelled it [shew] 
or [shough], then it would be clear that they were not taking their 
cues from i.t.a.

Lets take a quick look at some of your mismatches with the dictionary.

[method] according to ita might be spelled [methud] or [method].  You 
spell it "meathod".  This suggests that you have been tripped up, not by 
your i.t.a. training, but by TS words such as [measure]. 

[draged] on the other hand would be spelled [dragd] in i.t.a. so the 
dropping of the second g could be attributed to i.t.a. [dragged] would be 
spelled [draggd] in Spanglish. 

[abandond] is i.t.a. [abanndand or abanndond] would be Spanglish.  The 
traditional system usually uses standardized morphemes for past tense 
[ed] rather than phonemic spelling. 

[experament] would be [experiment] in i.t.a. and the same in TS.
Your spelling does match [temperament] which would be misspelled in 
i.t.a. [temprument/tempriment-ita; temmprament-ss] 

This is another error which cannot be traced back to Pitman's i.t.a. 
If you had learned with Spanglish as your i.t.a., then you might have a 
case because [experrament] or [experriment] would be a legitimate 
spellings in Spanglish where a=@ or schwa and the consonant is doubled after 
stressed short vowels.

[persentage] [ i.t.a.- persentij,  ss- percentaj]  I am not sure about 
this one.  Possibly i.t.a. could be faulted.

[intresting] This would be the correct i.t.a. spelling of interesting. 
Traditional spelling does not match current pronunciation.  I.t.a. 
could be faulted.

[applaude]  This error of adding a silent e on the end cannot be 
attributed to i.t.a.  [aplaud].  This is a case where the ITAs get it right 
and TS adds a misleading double consonant [applaud].  TS usually makes 
these mistakes because it is spelling a pre 1600 pronunciation rather 
than today’s pronunciation.

[creat]  The i.t.a. spelling would have been creaet.  Most i.t.a. 
students transitioning to TS are informed of the magic e which marks the 
long vowel sound from a distance giving you [create].  [ITA’s ae ee ie oe 
ue become ate, ede, ite, ode, ute]

[nonsence] ita nonsens.  TS adds an e to indicate an [s] rather than a 
[z] pronunciation.
The –ence spelling does not come from i.t.a.

[finnaly] [i.t.a. fienuli] [ss fainaly]  This looks like your personal 
invented spelling or a typo rather than something that could be 
attributed to your ITA training.  I can’t think of any case in TS where /fain/ 
was spelled [finn].  There are plenty of cases, however, where TS will 
use redundant and misleading double consonants.  The chief function of 
a double consonant in TS is to mark a short stressed vowel. 

A quick analysis of your spelling errors does not provide much 
ammunition for your charge that i.t.a. was responsible for your inability to 
spell well.  The error patterns do not appear to be related to i.t.a. but 
rather to trying to match similar traditional spellings. 

I think you were short changed in your early education but you are 
wrong to put all the blame on a simple medium, the initial teaching 
alphabet.  Many kids are shortchanged who have never been exposed to a 
consistent phonemic alphabet. 

The “look-say” approach to reading may also be getting a bad rap. 
There are hundreds of ways to teach reading and writing and they can all 
work if done right.

You have not indicated how you would teach reading and writing to kids. 
You have just said that you do not want them to experience what you 
experienced. I agree that the worst thing that can happen to a kid is to 
feel that he or she is being left behind and that no matter how much 
effort is made to do better, they continue to be at the bottom of the 
class and eventually just give up.

I was the director of a job corps center for two years so I know what 
it means to be turned off with schooling.  All of our efforts during the 
first six months was to build self esteem.  To do this we used a 
mastery teaching model where you could not fail and if you tried you would 
make visible progress.  You did not move ahead until you had mastered the 
fundamentals and your progress was never measured against anyone 
else’s. 

We went back to square one with respect to reading, writing, and 
spelling and were able to help 90% of the students.  We did not use i.t.a. 
but we did use some explicit phonics training to reveal what regularities 
exist in the traditional spelling code.  One thing that made the job 
corps approach work was the existence of a vast library of reading 
materials carefully graded by reading level.  This way, you could find 
something you were interested in reading at your reading level.  The basic 
way to improve your reading and writing is to spend more time on the task 
- to read and write more.  You are trying to keep the student in that 
state of flow between being overwhelmed and frustrated and being 
“underwhelmed” and bored. 

I think that most methods of training young people are flawed to the 
extent that they do not address the needs of individuals performing in 
the bottom quartile. 

Regards,

Steve