How do you solve a problem like Maria….

For over hundreds of years now, we have believed that language has created barriers to our vision of an egalitarian world. We no longer perceive language as a means of communication or preservation of culture. It has gone, way beyond that. People have manipulated language to such a degree that they now stand at the center of ethnic discrimination, bias and prejudice. However, when you actually think about it, is it really languages that are the problem? On the other hand, have these barriers been created by the multitude of scripts that render them. 

There are over 7000 languages spoken in the world today that use over 1400 scripts. Although many languages share common scripts, each have their own discrepancies with respect to characters and their pronunciations. 

This has led us to one major linguistic challenge that all of us have faced at some point in our lives. The challenge of homographs. Homographs are words that have the same spelling but have different r pronunciations. For example, the verb bear which means to endure and the noun bear, which is an animal. Differentiating between these common homographs is not difficult because of the contextual comprehensive abilities that we all possess. However, a major problem occurs with proper nouns that are homographs. Yes, you got it right; there are names of people and places that are homographs.

Take the name Maria for example. This simple five letter, three-syllable word has over ten different pronunciations in ten different languages. An even simpler name like Anna, this one has at least fifteen different pronunciations across the world. 

Note- If you are curious or simply don’t believe us, please visit this link or copy paste this actual link http://www.wikilipi.com/WikiAnnaMaria.html  in your browser. At this link,  you can read the spelling and the various  pronunciations In Ekalipi. You can also hear the different pronunciations generated by a TTS (Text to Speech) program.

Look at something more relatable. We pronounce the city name Paris as “Pāree” in French while we pronounce it as ” P@res” in English. Which one is the right pronunciation? Is there a right or a wrong pronunciation? The answer is obviously no!

Then, what is the solution to this common problem of mispronunciation? 

The answer is obvious. Its Λklepee (written as Ekalipi in Roman script), which means “One Script” in Sanskrit.  Ekalipi allows the author to pronounce words exactly the way he/she would like them pronounced. It eliminates all arguments about whether one or another pronunciation is correct.

 At the Ekalipi Institute, we aim to liberate the world from the tyranny of multiple scripts, while maintaining the essence of each language, its ethos and uniqueness.