Template:ITA


 * See Initial Teaching Alphabet (Unicode characters), Initial Teaching Alphabet (restricted character set), Initial Teaching Alphabet (images) and Initial Teaching Alphabet (Pitmanita)

See Initial Teaching Alphabet in Wikipedia.

Example

 * Example using the i.t.a. alphabet

radionally wun ov e fist tsks ov e infant scl wo t t ildren t rd. t i still, kwt rtly, a mæjor preoccpæon, sins rdi i a k t mu ov e lening at will cum læte.

Alternative versions
i.t.a. has alternative versions. For example i.t.a. Correspondence Course prefers "ks" for "x", and other references prefer "cs" (possibly because the transition form "cs" to "x" will be easier). In this article we use the recommendations of i.t.a. Correspondence Course.

Consonants
Double consonants mean exactly the same as single consonants. The same is valid for 🇮🇹 🇮🇹 and 🇮🇹

Non-rhotic vowels
cute is a new lexical set, with the sequence /juː/.

goose is a new lexical set, with /uː/ not preceded by /j/.

GOOSE = goose + cute

Rhotic vowels
In this section there are many digraphs and trigraphs which are indicated with asterisks.

(*) Digraph or trigraph

(**)
 * Exceptionally 🇮🇹 and 🇮🇹 are not digraphs/trigraphs.
 * General American and other American dialects, in these four words: 🇮🇹.
 * Received pronunciation: in words like 🇮🇹 (including 🇮🇹). See Pronunciation exercises: /ɒrV/ vs /ɔːrV/.


 * 🇮🇹 is a digraph only in dialects where tourist and guru have different initial vowels.


 * Exceptionally 🇮🇹 is not a digraph in 🇮🇹 (t.o. "dowry").


 * 🇮🇹 is not a digraph in words like 🇮🇹.

cure is a new lexical set, with the sequence /jʊə/.

poor is a new lexical set, with /ʊə/ not preceded by /j/.

CURE = poor + cure

Non-rhotic vowels followed by /r/
In these cases the vowel sounds with its normal sound, at least in Received Pronunciation. In General American there are exceptions for a, o and u (Mary-marry-merry merger, ɒr-ɔːr merger, and hurry-furry merger). These exceptions must be considered digraphs or trigraphs.

r vs 🇮🇹
In i.t.a. in Received Pronunciation 🇮🇹 and 🇮🇹 (and 🇮🇹 and 🇮🇹) are silent unless they are followed by a vowel. Below we can see all valid combinations of a vowel followed by 🇮🇹 or 🇮🇹.

Suffixes
Words ending in "-ure" in traditional orthography are spelled with in i.t.a.

Words ending in "-ion" in traditional orthography drop the "i". Other suffixes keep it.

The BATH lexical set
The "half-hook a" is an "a" with a big loop and a small hook This letter was added to i.t.a to account for the BATH lexical set, which is pronounced /ɑː, æ/.

🇮🇹 is used in print in words like 🇮🇹 or 🇮🇹. Children and teachers are supposed to write 🇮🇹 or 🇮🇹 according to their accent.

BATH in American i.t.a.
The [American] Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation doesn't use the i.t.a. symbol. This means that their books are not useful in the UK or Australia (which doesn't matter, because i.t.a currently is used only in the United States) and also, that some American children will have problems.

The CLOTH lexical set
i.t.a. added 🇮🇹 to be compatible across accents.

A similar situation happens with the CLOTH lexical set, pronounced /ɒ, ɔː/. The lack of special character is not problematic for several reasons:
 * Apparently there are no minimal pairs between CLOTH and LOT.
 * Words pronounced with /ɒ/ in Received Pronunciation and /ɔː/ in the United States can be divided in more than one set. Below we put some examples taken from Oxford Learner's Advanced Dictionary.
 * /ɔː/: belong, cloth, cost, cough, cross, dog, froth, gone, moth, soft, song, strong, wrong
 * /ɔː, ɑː/: across, albatross, alcohol, along, boss, catalogue, coffee, donkey, floss, fog, frog, furlong, loft, log, long, loss, lost, oblong, off, offer, office, often, quarrel, toss, warranty
 * /ɑː, ɔː/: broth, chocolate, diphthong, golf, gong, on, onset, ostrich, resolve, solve, squash, upon, wash
 * /ɒ/ as an innovation in Received Pronunciation:
 * /ɒ, ɔː/: austerity, Australia, Austria, cauliflower, because, sausage
 * /ɔː, ɒ, ɔː/: auction, hydraulic, salt
 * We don't want to add five new letters for these five sets.

The only problem generated by the lack of CLOTH vowel is the /ɒrV-ɔːrV/ split. The i.t.a. sequence 🇮🇹 as in is 🇮🇹 in Received Pronunciation and 🇮🇹 or a clipped version of 🇮🇹 in General American. Therefore, the children being taught i.t.a. in American English must know an exception, wich is that actually sounds  or  (with the exception of, , , and , wich have a regular pronunciation).
 * In the United States the Cot-caught merger is very common, and in that accent LOT and CLOTH are pronounced with the same vowel, /ɑː/.
 * All or almost all the words in the different CLOTH sets are spelled with "o" in t.o. and also with "o" in i.t.a.

An alternative would be to have another letter (e.g. to spell ). In this case could be used for. We even could use for all of the CLOTH lexical set (assuming we can agree on one).

CLOTH in current American i.t.a.
The [American] Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation uses for octopus and 🇮🇹 for ostrich. Since ostrich is in the CLOTH lexical set it seems the current i.t.a. Foundation decided to make their materials adapted for a subset of the American population.

The FORCE lexical set
i.t.a. can manage the FORCE lexical set very easily:, , ,. However in we see the spelling. Similarly, in the cover of we see  instead of. In 🇮🇹 "of course" is spelled instead of.

FORCE in current American i.t.a.
The [American] Initial Teaching Alphabet Foundation shows a student that uses for the FORCE lexical set, as suggested above.

National spellings
If i.t.a. were used in just one country (as it is now, because it is used only in the United States) it could be adapted to the local pronunciation. For a global alphabet this is absurd, because i.t.a. was modified (adding ) specially to accommodate for different accents.

The following national adaptations could be done. However accents are not uniform in all of the same country, so there is some risk of alienating even a minority of the local population.

Variant words
Some words don't follow a pattern, just like currently we have "carburettor" and "carburetor" (crburettor and crburætor in i.t.a). The following words either have different spellings in Received Pronunciation and General American, or a compromise spelling must be selected. See also American English v. British English § Variant words.

(*)Since in i.t.a. sounds /ɔː(r)/, there is no independent to represent /ɒr/. Here we propose and. A better solution would be that sounds /ɔː(r)/. In that hypothetical case we would have the following table.

Redundant symbols
Several symbols are redundant, and the one preferred is the most similar to traditional spelling.

Homophones
(*) speculation. Maybe they're is spelled ær in i.t.a.

Contextual or ambiguous symbols
Several symbols have a different meaning depending on the context
 * i
 * Stressed it is /ɪ/: kit
 * Unstressed it is /i/ or /ɪ/ (the happ Y vowel): taxi, matrial
 * It can be /j/: opinion


 * y
 * Before a vowel it is /j/: yes, biyond
 * Stressed it is /ɪ/: my
 * Unstressed it is /i/ or /ɪ/ (the happ Y vowel): copy, polynmial

Note that "polyandrous" either is ambiguous (polyandros = /pɒliːˈændrəs/ or /pɒlˈjændrəs/) or it must be written "poliandros").

In the following cases V is any vowel.
 * arV, arrV
 * In General American "a" is /æ/ and "arr" and "ar" are //, as in "carry", "charity"


 * erV, errV
 * In General American "e" is // and "err" and "er" are //, as in "cherry", "very"


 * irV, irrV
 * In General American "i" is /ɪ/ and "irr" and "ir" can be /ɪə/, as in "mirror", "spirit"


 * orV
 * Normally it is /ɔː/: glory
 * It can be /ɒ, ɔː/: forist


 * orrV
 * Normally it is /ɒ, ɔː/: corridor, torrid
 * It can be /ɒ, ɑː/ in these four words: sorry, sorr, borrow, tomorr
 * It is /ɔː/ in -ing forms: 🇮🇹 (this word probably was never printed in i.t.a.)


 * urV, urrV
 * In General American "u" is /ʌ/ and "ʌrr" and "ur" are /ɜː/, as in "hurry", "curij".

Heteronyms
Unfortunately there are heteronyms in i.t.a. because the stress is not represented.

Number of symbols
It is usually said that i.t.a. has 45 symbols, 24 letters of the alphabet and several special symbols and ligatures:


 * 24 letters of the alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, y, z
 * 8 special symbols:, , , , , , ,
 * 13 ligatures: æ,, , , , , , , , , , ,

In addition i.t.a. has several digraphs and trigraphs
 * Several vowels followed by the symbol ("r" with left tail)
 * The combinations dj, dʒ, ck, r and t
 * The double letters of traditional orthography: bb, cc, dd, ff, gg, ll, mm, nn, pp, rr, ss,, tt, zz
 * Double letters used very seldom in traditional orthography: kk, vv

The "e" of "teяm" /ɜː/ is different from the "e" of "eri" //. This means that "e" must be considered a digraph, and not two symbols. The same is valid for i and u. In the spirit of i.t.a. these digraphs could have been ligatures, and the "tail" that is part of the symbol easily blends with the previous letter. However, since was added later to i.t.a., probably it was thought it would be easier to ad one symbol instead of three ligatures.

Similarly the "o" of "north" /ɔː/ is different from the "o" of lot /ɒ, ɑː/, and the "o" of forest /ɒ, ɔː/. Therefore "or" should be considered a digraph. Since "or" is a digraph, we need to explicitly say that in Received Pronunciation "orr" is normally /ɒr/, as in "torrid". This means that "orr" is a trigraph.


 * 12 rhotic digraphs and trigraphs: e, i, or, orr, u, r, y, ær, r, r, r, r

In the case of "r" and "r" (start, dinosr) the vowel sound is the same as "" and "" (fe, dte), and therefore it is not necessary to consider these as digraphs.

Additionally, children may use "r" when i.t.a. prefers "or".

Conclusion
i.t.a. has 61 symbols, digraphs and trigraphs
 * 24 letters of the alphabet
 * 8 special symbols
 * 13 ligatures
 * 12 rhotic digraphs and trigraphs
 * 5 consonantal digraphs and trigraphs

The total is 76 if we add the double letters (78 with "kk" and "vv"). And we didn't count, r, the optional digraph for children.

Number of sounds
Sometimes it is said that i.t.a has 44 symbols for 44 sounds. This count excludes the half-hook a.

The following sections show the sounds supported by i.t.a.

Consonants
(*) /ʍ/ is normally merged with /w/

i.t.a. supports 25 consonants, but /ʍ/ is not present in most English dialects.

Vowels in Received Pronunciation
The total number is 21, but we must subtract /juː/ and /jʊə/, because /j/ is a separate symbol, already counted as a consonant.

Vowels in General American
The total number is 19, but we must subtract /(j)uː/ and /(j)ʊr/, because /j/ is a separate symbol, already counted as a consonant.

Conclusion
i.t.a. supports 25 consonants, 21 British vowels and, a vowel for compatibility. In total i.t.a. supports 47 sounds, and it does not have a special symbol for /ə/.

Standard i.t.a. spelling
🇮🇹

🇮🇹 Copyright 2000 Douglas N. Honorof, Jill McCullough & Barbara Somerville. {{{ita|{{{type}}}|{{{AU}}}l r{{{ie}}}ts re{{{s}}}e{{{r}}}vd.}}

i.t.a. with a Received Pronunciation accent
In i.t.a. children can spell according to their accent. Here we show a text the way it could look if produced by a child who speaks with a Received Pronunciation accent (or, equivalently, with Estuary English accent).

🇮🇹

🇮🇹 Copyright 2000 Douglas N. Honorof, Jill McCullough & Barbara Somerville. 🇮🇹

i.t.a. with a General American accent
Here we show a text the way it could look if produced by a child who speaks with a General American accent.

🇮🇹

🇮🇹 Copyright 2000 Douglas N. Honorof, Jill McCullough & Barbara Somerville. 🇮🇹

Winny e magpie
See.

Original version
“is fee will not lie doun!” cried Winny e magpie t he frend Sylvia, e robin. “I hav tried t keep it flat.” just en Winny spd a spottid cat. e cat was scrating its toe-næl on a garden h. Winny n is cat was he foe. ut Winny cried, “e cat cn’t creep up to is soft nest ov dried twig!"

was
 * nd and copy from e story

wud with ie or oe in em


 * æm and copy e pictr

av y seen a magpie? t abt it.

Regularized version
“is fee will not l doun!” crd Winny e magp t he frend Sylvia, e robin. “ hav trd t kp it flat.” ust en Winny spd a spotted cat. e cat wo scrating its t-næl on a grden h. Winny n is cat wo he foe. ut Winny crd, “e cat cn’t crp up to is soft nest ov drd twig!"

wo
 * nd and copy from e story

wud with ' or ' in em


 * æm and copy e pictr

av y sn a magpie? t abt it.