The Initial Teaching Alphabet
I’m very interested in the relationship between oral understanding and visual understanding. In The Gutenberg Galaxy, section “The alphabet is an aggressive and militant absorber and transformer of cultures, as Harold Innis was the first to show,” I saw a reference to a strange alphabet which was constructed to aid British children in learning to read. McLuhan neglects to tell us what this “43-unit” alphabet is, but through a little sleuthing I found out that it was the Initial Teaching Alphabet. My library also owned a children’s book in this alphabet, Couboi Smaull.
Reading this text reminded me of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake where additional meanings begin to manifest themselves if you read the work aloud. The couboi’s story made little sense until you tried to speak what was in the text. I was unable to read this book without sounding out words, which was an interesting experience that I thought I had left in childhood.
A two page spread from children's book, Couboi Smaull
Another view of the same page:
Some text from the children's book Couboi Smaull
December 19th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Again you hit on this rich area of connection between the written and the spoken…how they intersect and deepen each other. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a book such as this–how it gets my mind swirling on language and words and sound and what we associate with them. Please keep conjuring this for the library community–which will ultimately means everyone. You make us wonder!
Tony
July 12th, 2009 at 11:57 am
This is how I learned to read, in kindergarten! I attended John Adams School in Stockton, California. I am now 43 years old, and a very advanced reader. I don’t remember ever having trouble adapting to the regular alphabet afterward. I remember being in advanced reading courses, throughout elementary school.
I read a lot as a child, and still do, to this day. It’s such a ‘flashback’ to see these pages again. I have no trouble at all, reading it now….interesting.