All the credit for TE goes to University of Kentucky, the lessons and graphics are used with permission. What I did was mostly just a lot of monkey work changing (almost all of) the spellings.

Changes from the original TE:

• 'j' stands for 'dzh'.
• 'jh' stands for Spanish 'j'.
• The stressed syllable is marked with an acute vowel unless it is the first one.
• Grave vowels (only in learning texts) are written for schwa, also before liquids when they stand for a unique syllable.
• Vowels are kept as in regular English unless they are obviously pronounced differently (according to Merriam-Webster's dictionary entries).
• Words are spelled as pronounced individually (or when clearly emphasized). Some words ('There', etc..) have different pronunciations for different meanings, so here they are considered different words.
• All of the pronunciations are taken from Merriam-Webster's online dictionary. When there are options, the closest to the SE written word is chosen. Except for some differences (which other dictionaries agree with):
• All the suffixes '-ly', '-ie', '-y', etc.. are spelled '-i' instead of '-ï'. I follow other dictionaries for long '-ï' endings.
• 'r'-ending words with stress on the last syllable have the schwa marked: '-èr', etc..
• 'ä' stands for \ä\ or \[a']\ when SE writes 'a' AND mw does not give the option of \a\ AND other dictionaries pronounce it as "long a". (father, car, yard, card, palm, etc..)
• 'w' stands for all \hw\
• In very isolated cases (aunt, room) I chose options that do not clash with other words.
• The texts: Declaration of Independence; Preamble to U.S. Constitution; Amendments to U.S. Constitution: Bill of Rights; and Gettysburg Address have been replaced with stories from Phil Shapiro.

I call this attempt finished. Note that I have no intention of writing a "translated" set of lessons for Spanish, so there will never be a link to the Spanish version (!). If I ever dedicate more time to this, these are the things to do:

• Add the digraph 'ng' to the alphabet(s).
• Revise the grammar of Shapiro's stories, right now the verb tenses are not simplified at all.
• Add words (from the stories) to the vocabulary lists.
• Order the vocabulary lists alphabetically (!).
• Find some rule (and apply it) to the problem of roots changing pronunciation: tour, tourist -> tuùr, turist; piano, pianist. This happens in many words, although this could be getting into a can of worms.
• Do a final pass with the spellchecker.
• Change appendixes 7 and 8.
• ... I don't know, you tell me...

For the curious at heart here I provide the Netscape dictionary file (you can read it as a text file) that I built up during this project.

All the best,
Diego Moriarty

Last updated: 2 May 2001