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Hi, Matthias Brendler here, transdisciplinary designer blogging what's interesting or significant relating to: Design, Education, Culture, Technology and Business (as well as anything that's really cool).

EXPERIENCE: Silenc, a Tactile Method to Highlight Silent Vowels

How much of a language is silent? What does it look like when you take the silence out? Can we use Processing code as a tool to answer these questions? silenc is a tangible visualization of an interpretation of silent letters within Danish, English and French. One of the hardest parts about language learning is pronunciation; the less phonetic the alphabet, the harder it is to correctly say the words.

A common peculiarity amongst many Western languages is the silent letter. A silent letter is a letter that appears in a particular word, but does not correspond to any sound in the word’s pronunciation. A selection of works by Hans Christian Andersen is used as a common denominator for these “translations”. All silent letters are set in red text. When viewed with a red light filter, these letters disappear, leaving only the pronounced text. 

Data Visualization 2012, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design with Golan Levin and Marcin Ignac