Before we left for Cameroon, we did a series of Africa Night events, which included, among other things, a taste of what it’s like to understand your vowel system anew, like we do in writing system development for new writing systems. At that point, our method was cards on tables:
It was interactive, engaging, and fun, by most accounts.
Then we started working on A−Z+T, and put this experience in the computer. So we started a similar series of events we’re calling The Alphabet Experience, which includes the fun and interaction of figuring out how many vowel sounds you have, but you also get to see a demonstration of the computer tool I’m working on.
As always, the tool is driven by people who speak the language (in this case English!), in consultation with the rest of the group:
So this easily fits in whatever context a home group might normally meet:
Also as usual, I stand outside the process, and give only minimal guidance to its mechanics, reserving comments to answering questions and more global issues.
This experience is in English, because the point of the experience is to get at your own language, and most people we work with here are English speakers —and because English has such a crazy writing system! But it is could be adapted to other languages, if there is a group of people that want to test it out on another language. After all, A−Z+T is designed to finish the remaining alphabets of the world, not to analyze English. :-)
If you’d like to go through The Alphabet Experience, please just let us know. You can write us or book through a google doc from the big pink button on our home page or by clicking on “The Alphabet Experience” from our main menu. We can do this for larger or smaller groups, within whatever logistics you have, so long as everyone can see the computer screen. We find it’s best to allow 90 minutes, to fully experience the process, as well as leave time for questions.
Responses to The Alphabet Experience
The Alphabet Experience was an enjoyable way to discover how alphabets are developed. It was fascinating to hear the unique pronunciations of words from everyone in the group and eye opening as to how the process works. —April Kemper
The Alphabet Experience was fun to do and was a way for our group to work together. It also showed us how we have different ways of saying words, but we can all come to agreement somehow! —Steve & Kim
This work by Kent is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
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