What Is PIE?

Welcome to the official website for Phonetically Intuitive English (PIE)!

A Big Problem with English

We all know the English language has a poor correspondence between spelling and pronunciation, which means a word's spelling may not reflect its pronunciation well, and its pronunciation may not reflect its spelling well either. For example, "ea" has a wide range of diverse pronunciations in "speak", "steak", "bread", "Korea", "reality", "create" and "ocean". This problem affects two groups of people:

• People who learn English as a second language (ESL) may be familiar with a word's written form but may have problems hearing or saying it;
• Children in English-speaking countries may speak English fluently but undergo a long struggle to learn reading and writing.

Enter PIE!

Our project, Phonetically Intuitive English (PIE), can solve the above problems effectively! PIE is a Chrome browser extension to show diacritics on normal English words to make their pronunciation crystal clear. Just look at this quick example, which shows a sentence's American English pronunciation in detail:

We also provide a Lite mode for advanced English learners:

Such a form benefits both ESL learners and children in English-speaking countries:

• ESL learners can immediately acquire a word's pronunciation as they scan its spelling augmented with diacritics. Spelling will also be learned better as pronunciation is key to spelling. Better yet, we also provide another free Chrome extension to show word meaning (see screenshot below). Learn More »
• Children in English-speaking countries can immediately read aloud a word in such a form, as well as get familiar with the word's spelling. Learn More »

And better yet...

• The scheme is just one page and very easy to learn.
• The whole project is under a free license.
• You can make and sell diacritically marked books for children learning to read and ESL learners.

Interested? Get PIE now!