| School children in English-speaking countries have difficulty spelling words such as 'people' and 'friend'. They contain the odd vowels which are not pronounced. SAYPU suggests it is about time we started spelling what we pronounced and not just in English, but in all languages. Say, for instance, the word 'oui' - or 'yes' in French - would be spelled WEE and the word 'Leute' in German - meaning 'people' - as LOITE. The director of Logos Capital, Jaber George, who is launching the programme today, insists their aim is to help raise worldwide literacy levels by making spelling easier. "One of the reasons why, in some cultures and in certain languages, there is higher illiteracy rates than in others is because of the difficulty in learning how to read and write, and by having, actually, a phonetic alphabet, then you don't have this problem anymore; everyone will be able to read and write much more easily. So Esperanto, basically, is to have a single language spoken by everyone; here, what we are trying to do is just to have all these languages written using the same alphabet." Even though there might be linguists out there frowning at the project already, Jaber insists their programme won't undermine the beauty and the playfulness of words and languages. They aim to create their own dictionary of words from around the world. And if you are so inclined, you could log in and add a word or two from your part of the world. |
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