Phonemic Spelling

The practice of spelling words based on their pronunciation rather than their conventional orthography, used as a workaround when text-to-speech systems do not support a desired language. In AAC contexts in Ghana, speech and language therapists experimented with typing English phonemic approximations of Ghanaian words to make the Look to Speak app produce understandable speech in local languages. While partially successful — spoken words were often understandable though mispronounced — this approach has significant limitations including inconsistent results and the inability to represent sounds not found in English phonology.