THE UNIFON ALPHABET READER
Original Stories by Neil Stewart
Purpose of This Site
This site provides reading material for those who want to practice their reading skills using the Unifon Alphabet (© 1959 by John Malone). I am placing my short stories online with the hope that it will encourage interest in the Unifon alphabet. If you wish to use these copyrighted stories,listed in the table below,for non-profit purposes, please contact me.
The Unifon alphabet is a 40 character phonemic alphabet consisting of 16 vowels and 24 consonants. Each character (grapheme) represents only one sound (phoneme), and in the reverse direction each sound is represented by only one of the 40 characters. In other words Unifon is an alphabet that lets you write a word the way it is spoken; and allows you to easily read it by the way it is written.
A young child's speaking vocabulary is much larger than his writing vocabulary of properly spelled words. By using a phonemic alphabet like Unifon a child can write and read more meaningful stories that tap all of his speaking vocabulary rather than using a limited vocabulary of properly spelled words. The purpose of Unifon was not to replace the 26 character alphabet but to provide a secondary or auxilary alphabet that a child could use to express his/her early thoughts.
The present spelling of words in the English language is atrocious, to put it mildly. There have been many proposals made for English spelling reform, including Unifon. Detailed information on most of these proposals is now available on the World Wide Web. All of the proposals are well thought out and have merit and it is not my intention to advocate one over another. However, I thought it would be interesting to experience the future now. A future where English spelling reform is in place. The medium I am using for this experience is Unifon.
Learning the Unifon Alphabet
If you have arrived at this site by means of a search engine, be sure to save this site as a favorite place or bookmark it, because some of the following links will send you to another site. Lessons on the Unifon Alphabet can be found at www.unifon.org.
Stories in Unifon
If you know the sound that each Unifon character represents, you will be able to read words written in Unifon. From there on it is just a question of building up your reading speed. The stories on this site should help you do that.
Selecting a story from the Table below
If you select a story below for viewing in a PDF file, you will not have to install a Unifon font. I recommend viewing the stories in a PDF file so that you can immedately see the story in Unifon
If you select a story below for viewing in a HTML file, you will have to download and install the 'UNIFON F 2005' font. This can be obtained as a download at www.unifon.org. Without the font installed you will only see a mixture of upper and lower case letters.
This Home Page, "The Unifon Alphabet Reader" by Neil Stewart, is posted on his daughter's Domain "dlstewart". Dawn Lesley Stewart is the author of the children's book "Harriet's Horrible Hair Day". Her Home Page can be visited at: Dawn Lesley Stewart.
© Neil Stewart 2001
March 14, 2001
Last Modified January 23, 2006