Visible Speech

Origins

Visible Speech is a writing system invented in 1867 by Alexander Melville
Bell, father of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. Melville
Bell was a teacher of the deaf and intended his writing system to help deaf
students learn spoken language.

Visible Speech was also the first notation system for the sounds of speech
independent of a particular language or dialect and was widely used to teaching
students how to speak with a "standard" accent.

Visible Speech symbols are intended to provide visual representations of the
positions the organs of speech need to be in to articulate individual sounds.
Once the underlying principles are understood it is apparently fairly straightforward.

Visible Speech is also known as the Physiological Alphabet.

Visible Speech chart

Visible Speech vowels

Visible Speech with IPA equivalents

Visible Speech IPA consonants

Visible Speech IPA modifiers

Visible Speech IPA vowels

IPA charts with Visible Speech symbols

IPA pulmonic consonant chart with Visible Speech symbols

IPA vowel chart with Visible Speech symbols

Visible Speech for English

Alexander Melville Bell’s original Visible Speech chart

Alexander Melville Bell's original Visible Speech chart

Sample text in Visible Speech

Sample text in Visible Speech (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Transliteration

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Visible Speech charts and sample text provided by Joseph Pickett