Tutorial


A SHORT TRUESPEL TUTORIAL

Truespel is a replacement pronunciation guide for our dictionaries in USA accent only. It can be learned quickly by USA English literate folks and be readable within a few minutes, but it takes an hour or so of practice to use. Below is all the initial familiarization you need.

A little story contains all the sounds of USA English: "That quick beige fox jumped in the air over each thin dog.  Look out I shout, for he's foiled you again, creating chaos." Now written in truespel: “That kwik baezh faaks jumpd in thee air oever eech thhin daug.  Look out ie shout for heez foild yue uggen, kreeyyaeteeng (kree”aeteeng) kaeyaas (kae’aas). This short story is actually a complete tutorial on truespel. It contains all 40 sounds of USA English and illustrates the two rules you need to know about truespel. Note that “creating chaos” can be said with a “y-glide” or not.

Two Truespel Rules. There are two rules to truespel, the stress rule and glottal stop rule. 

To be a pronunciation guide truespel must show primary stress in a word. Truespel does this by having the first syllable in a word be the default stressed syllable then showing stress on other syllables by preceding them with a double consonant, for example “desert,dessert.” For the consonants spelled with two letters, stress is indicated by doubling the first letter; e.g., ch/cch sh/ssh, th/tth, thh/tthh, zh/zzh. 

The glottal stop is shown by most spelling systems as an apostrophe. An example is bottle being shown as bo’le, where the “tt” is replaced by the nonsound of compressing the larynx rather than making a “t”. In truespel the apostrophe is used the same way, in essence coming between two vowels, especially when the pronunciation of a consonant is dropped, such as when the "tt" is dropped in saying "bottle.” The apostrophe thus separates two vowels next to each other, e.g. chaos (kae’aas). When the second vowel is stressed, the apostrophe is doubled (quote sign), so “created” become “kree”aetid” in truespel. (Note that “creating chaos” could be truespeld “kreeyyaeteeng kaeyaas” if pronounciation has a distict “y” instead of a glottal stop.) 

That's it for learning truespel. There are 40 phonemes and two rules to learn. The rest is practice in spelling what you hear, achieving phonetic awareness. The spelling key of the 40 USA English phonemes is below. (note that ~ means phonetically spelled in truespel


Truespel - 17 USA English vowels - sample words.
(Here all sample words are spelled similarly in truespel)

~a – pat ~aa – Saab ~ae - sundae ~air - air
~au – auger ~e – pet ~ee – see ~er – her
~i – pit ~ie – pie ~oe – toe ~oi - void
~oo – look ~ou – out ~or – or ~ue – blue
~u – up

Truespel – 23 USA English consonants – sample words.
(Two words would be spelled differently in
truespel – ~thhin and ~vizhin)

~b – but ~ch – chin ~d – did ~f – fun
~g – get ~h – hat ~j – jet ~k – kit
~l – let ~m – men ~n – nap ~p – pen
~r – run ~sh – ship ~s – sun ~t - tap
~th - that ~thh - thin ~v - van ~w - win
~y - yes ~z - zip ~zh – vision
~q = Spanish “r” with one trill ~rq = Spanish “r” with muli-trills


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