Hershey’s Phonetic System v.3

The emoji alphabets

When you see these what sound do you hear in your head?

K😬d

G😮l

If you are like me, I read the emojis like the vowels, ee and o. When we were trying to simplify the Hershey’s phonetic system using our body parts that help communicate, we try to simplify each part using symbols. So that people who read them need not rely on second hand knowledge about what different symbols should sound like. Not long back, I got an epiphany when looking at emoji and realised that certain emojis could convey sounds. Can we modify them to make better represent the phonetics?

This is where I am trying to develop another branch or version of the Hershey’s phonetic system that is geared towards emojis in general.

The challenges

While mimicking the vowels sound as well as hand signs become easier using emojis, the consonants is another ball game altogether.

To visualise G, K, P, etc., or even nasal sounds, we will need to find ways to make this work. For this I have a simple prototype that shows one on the side and the other facing us.

🗣️😬

🐦 😮

I could only find these one with side view and the other for animals haha. The gist is that I want the side view to show where the tongue placement or whether there is a nasal sound or not by make it look like the nose is pinched or highlighted, etc. It’s still a prototype but if it could convey the parts clearly, it could help people read texts easily using just icons. Look like we are back to the hieroglyphs age again haha. Full circle loop haha.

Prototypes

To be updated

Hershey’s photo that I found on mama’s phone 🥹: