Patent US 5,953,692

A method and apparatus which transforms a standard natural language alphabet into a phonetic alphabet provides a user with a plurality of alphabetic characters of a natural language and prompts the user to select a letter. When a letter is selected, a plurality of allographs containing that letter are displayed, along with indications of the sounds of the phonemes which are encoded by the allographs. The plurality of allographs have in common the selected letter. Thus, a user need not learn a specialized phonetic alphabet to represent sounds for which the allographs may not be known. At the same time, the user is taught alternative allographic representations for the same phoneme. In addition, because a letter may appear in allographs which encode respectively different phonemes, the user is taught alternative sounds that the selected letter may represent. This translated phonemic information may be used in a further selection process to specify phonemic information without needing to know a specialized phonemic alphabet.