The Problem
The International Phonetic Chart is used by linguist and lexicographers to represent phonemes alphabetically. It is derived from the Latin Alphabet. It is however like a whole new language to learn and is quite euro-centric in nature, since most European languages have the same script.
Why
Any person who wishes to learn the pronunciations of a different language for daily use is now confronted with the mammoth task of learning another one. In a developing post-colonial country like India, a working knowledge of English is needed in every field.
Thus we need a new system to make this learning easy as well as easily accessible for the layman.
A Proposed Solution
Creating a set of hyper-localized alphabets that represent the pronunciations of the language. These alphabets would be decentralized and based on the mother tongue of the learner. Here, I have used the script for Marathi and Hindi - the Devnagiri Script.
Scope of this Project
I have worked only on the vowels because it seemed to be the biggest problem area. In theory, there are only 5 English vowels but practically there are many more. Because of all the other languages that have influenced it.
It is not my aim to develop an exact method, rather a loose-fitting but accurate method of pronunciations. (example: dough shouldn't be pronounced like cough, but any variation of doh, douh is accepted)
In this solution, the English pronunciations will be limited to the pronunciations available in Devnagiri. Since, it is our aim to create a fast method, this tradeoff is expected.
