Kriiip kriiiip kriiiiiiip - a tactile book with Ideophones
My friend and colleague, Wilna Combrinck, and I joined forces to enter our project "Kriiip kriiiip kriiiiiiip", a tactile book that relies on Ideophones and phonesematics to tell its Afrikaans story about the Crowned Lapwing, into the Pendoring Awards and have been listed as finalists!
Read more here if you lus:
In accordance with the South African Constitution, discrimination on the grounds of disability is prohibited and children’s right to education is enshrined. However, only a small percentage of text published in South Africa is made available in accessible formats, including tactile material for visually impaired readers. This leads to a severe lack of contextually relevant material in local languages for the thousands of visually impaired children enrolled in South African schools.
South Africa has 12 official languages, Afrikaans being one of them. It is a younger language, with roots in resistance against colonial oppression that evolved out of indigenous and colonial languages. It was formed out of necessity for communication amongst displaced and oppressed people. Afrikaans is rich in ideophonic interpretations.
Ideophones are words that derive their meaning and interpretation from the sounds that they reference or senses that they trigger. Similarly, phonosemantics refers to the onomatopoeic meaning and interpretation of a word’s sound and what it symbolises. We see examples of this in the Afrikaans naming of indigenous flora and fauna (e.g. in Afrikaans, the Grey Turaco bird is called a Kwêhvoël, named after its warning sound “Kuh-wê”.) This naming convention engages the imagination by encouraging a creative interpretation of the concept.
This project explores phonosemantics in a tactile format for visually impaired South African children. The project team has a background in narrative illustration, tactile picture books and education. Tactile interpretations are created in collaboration with visually impaired readers and adaptations form a multi-sensory interactive installation.
Read more here if you lus:
In accordance with the South African Constitution, discrimination on the grounds of disability is prohibited and children’s right to education is enshrined. However, only a small percentage of text published in South Africa is made available in accessible formats, including tactile material for visually impaired readers. This leads to a severe lack of contextually relevant material in local languages for the thousands of visually impaired children enrolled in South African schools.
South Africa has 12 official languages, Afrikaans being one of them. It is a younger language, with roots in resistance against colonial oppression that evolved out of indigenous and colonial languages. It was formed out of necessity for communication amongst displaced and oppressed people. Afrikaans is rich in ideophonic interpretations.
Ideophones are words that derive their meaning and interpretation from the sounds that they reference or senses that they trigger. Similarly, phonosemantics refers to the onomatopoeic meaning and interpretation of a word’s sound and what it symbolises. We see examples of this in the Afrikaans naming of indigenous flora and fauna (e.g. in Afrikaans, the Grey Turaco bird is called a Kwêhvoël, named after its warning sound “Kuh-wê”.) This naming convention engages the imagination by encouraging a creative interpretation of the concept.
This project explores phonosemantics in a tactile format for visually impaired South African children. The project team has a background in narrative illustration, tactile picture books and education. Tactile interpretations are created in collaboration with visually impaired readers and adaptations form a multi-sensory interactive installation.