(Please note that CRESS is perfectly applicable to British and other dialects of English. The current system orients slightly to a standard American dialect and can be functionally workable for all until the very minor dialect adjustments can be made. We apologize for delay in optimization due to our small team.) Simple: We add by subtracting… First, let’s remove stupidities in how we say the alphabet.
- A – You don’t hear “ay” in ‘bat , sat, fat’: not “b-ay-t”. Just an a sound.
- B – You don’t hear “bee” in ‘bat’: not “bee-at”. Just the b sound.
- etc.
- Forget the vowel tacked on when saying the letters of the alphabet (b+ee). It’s a confusing ghost when you read and write.
- It’s hard to say consonants without a vowel, so we just add the blandest of vowels, almost not there: Add ‘uh’ to each of them identically. This focuses away from the vowel and on the sound of the consonant.
- We don’t even need all the consonants, and can reduce the alphabet removing C J Q X.
Here is your new consonant alphabet. The alphabet is reduced from 26 to 22. Notice how easy it is to memorize: just leave out the vowels and put ‘uh’ in place of the junk that used to be there. Rhymes and ditties can be made from this by teachers but we’ll stick to the bare bones.
puh buh tuh duh kuh guh fuh vuh suh zuh huh muh nuh luh ruh wuh yuh
Next, a bit of fun with the trick CRESS has up its sleeve. Science demands we have one letter for each sound, but you can notice that this alphabet doesn’t yet have a way to write the first sounds in words like ‘shoe’, ‘thing’ ‘those’ or the last sound in ‘beige’ or ‘sing’. No, we didn’t subtract too much because reading (famously in the science) requires phonetic (aka here: phonemic) awareness. CRESS builds in this awareness by adding three characters on every keyboard: ^<>. The trick is that these are used to create phonetic awareness of how the tongue is used in pronunciation. Arrows point the way the tongue should move for a sound.- < means “move the tongue forward”
- > means “move the tongue backward”
- ^ means “move the tongue upward”
Make a long hissing ‘s’ sound dragging it out. Now do it again while slowly pushing your tongue tip forward until it is between the teeth. What do you get? Yes, the ‘th’ sound in thing. We now have a symbol for that ‘s<‘. An s tongue tip forward is a ‘th’.
You just learned phonetic awareness while at the same time learning CRESS. Now, let’s do the same for 4 more sounds:- Make a long buzzing ‘z’ sound dragging it out. Now do it again while slowly pushing your tongue tip forward until it is between the teeth. What do you get? Yes, the slightly different (voiced) ‘th’ sound in ‘those’. We now have a symbol for that ‘z<‘. A z tongue tip forward is the ‘th’ sound in ‘the, those, them’. Teachers may ask students to put a finger on the adam’s apple to feel the difference, but the details of phonetics are not necessary for CRESS.
- Make a long hissing ‘s’ sound dragging it out. Now do it again while slowly pushing your tongue tip BACKWARD until it is a different sound you recognize. What do you get? Yes, the ‘sh’ sound in ‘shoe’. We now have a symbol for that too. Just add the back arrow: ‘s>’. An s tongue backward is an ‘sh’ sound.
- Make a long buzzing ‘s’ sound dragging it out. Now do it again while slowly pushing your tongue tip BACKWARD until it is a different sound you recognize. What do you get? Yes, the ‘ge’ sound at the end of ‘beige’. We now have a symbol for that too. Just add the back arrow: ‘s>’. A z tongue backward is the sound you hear in ‘beige, measure, pleasure’.
- Make a long ‘n’ sound dragging it out. Now do it again while slowly pushing your tongue body BACKWARD until it is a sound you recognize. What do you get? Yes, the ‘th’ sound at the end of ‘thing’. We now have a symbol for that ‘n>’. An s tongue body backward is the ‘ng’ you hear at the end of ‘wing, bring, long’.
- judge: dz> a^ dz>
- church: ts> a^r ts>
- sh, ch, th, ph
- But, we duse two symbols when there are really two sounds: gin dz>in, chin ts>in