The Qikit Alphabet

Spell intuitively instead of ambiguously.

Qikit is the simplest possible way to express 43 sounds with 26 letters. It is consistent, so it soon becomes intuitive. It is designed to blend with traditional English spelling in grade school.

abdef ghijk lmnop qrstu vwyz 24 letters keep their original soft sound.
C is interchangeable with k. It should never be used for the s sound.
Q represents qu, qw, & kw.
X replaces cs, ks, cks, & kes in words like talks (tox) and blocks (blox)
We keep c & k, ee & y, oi & oy, as they are shown in traditional spelling to ease the learning of traditional spelling in later schooling.

7 long vowels are represented with double letters:

aa is the long a sound as in make (maak)
ee is the long e sound as in easy (eezee) (eezy)
ii or I are the long i sound as in find (fiind)
oh is a long o sound as in over (ohvr)
oo is another long o sound as in soon (soon)
uh is the vowel in book and look (buhk) (luhk)
uu is the long yoo sound as in view (vuu)

10 multiple letters for other sounds.
oi or oy are the sound in point or boy.
ou is the ou sound in about (ubout) or town (toun)
ar is the ar sound as in part.
or is the or sound as in court (cort), war (wor)
air is the air sound as in prayer (prair), care (cair)

ch is the ch sound as in much.
sh is the sh sound as in she (shee)
th is the th sound as in the (thu) or (thin).
wh is the wh sound as in what (whut)
zh is the zh sound in measure (mezhr)

These examples bring intuitive spelling into perspective.

The second aspect of phonics is pronunciation.

All unstressed vowels have the u sound so we should spell them as they sound. This is the greatest single help in spelling and in pronunciation.

Compare these words.

The last 3 letters in indicate & senate are the same but they are pronounced differently and Qikit shows the difference.

1. Read to your child starting at a few months of age and continue reading to them until they prefer reading alone. Help them get engaged in the story by reading stories or nursery rhymes with pictures that tell parts of the story. As they age the stories will become more interesting and their vocabulary will expand.
2. Learn the Qikit alphabet.
3. Prepare flash cards with letters of all 43 sounds and practice them.
   To print: Open the file with Adobe Acrobat. Select ‘Print’, under ‘Page Sizing & Handling’ hit ‘Multiple’. On ‘Pages per sheet:’ select ‘Custom 2 by 2’, hit ‘Print’.
4. Spend 5 to 10 minutes per day for 5 days a week practicing the sounds of those letters. If they are not interested at one year, you should try a few days every month until they show interest.
5. When the child has learned the letter sounds you can start them on story books with Qikit spelling. Buy 2 copies of suitable books. Translate the text to Qikit and print the words. Cut the Qikit text and tape it over the original traditional text in one copy. When the child can read the Qikit text in several books you can introduce them to traditional text in the original copy of each book to familiarize them with the non-phonetic words. Here children will learn there are two spellings for many words. They won’t need to spell them, but they must learn to read them clearly. Learning to read non-phonetic words is much easier than learning to spell them and traditional spelling can be left until later grades.

Every child is different, and it may take time to interest them in reading. Usually girls are more receptive to literacy than boys. Yours may be different.

With good teaching practices used today, the most important issues are the time and effort provided by the teacher (parent), the interest of the child, and the simplicity of the program.

The simplicity of Qikit is to have our spelling match our spoken words without extra letters or contradictory spellings.

Early readers tend to be eager learners.

This program was developed for very young children, but it applies to any literally challenged students including dyslexics and ESL.