The Magic of the Alphabetic Principle

Easily one of the coolest things the human brain can do.

Something borderline magical happens around the age of 5 years old…

Squiggly black lines on a piece of paper or screen suddenly transform from being meaningless shapes into something incredibly powerful.

I’m experiencing the magic as a parent right now. My 5 year old’s learning to read, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life.

His mind is making connections he never knew possible, and the sense of empowerment that he feels is contagious, leaving me ready to jump for joy every time he reads something on his own.

Equally impressive is how quickly it’s all come together. In the span of just a few weeks, I’ve watched him occasionally recognize letters in his name, to reading full on sentences with confidence.

Here’s the thing — it really hasn’t been that quick. This is just the latest stage in a process that’s been happening deep inside his head since 6 months of age.

I want you to picture a 6 month old baby, blowing raspberries, babbling, and experimenting with different sounds.

Besides being frustratingly cute, these simple actions are laying the foundation for what’s to come - learning to read.

You see, the brain is undergoing a rapid transformation. Neurons are firing and connecting at a blistering pace, forming pathways that will one day allow the child to make sense of the squiggles and lines we call letters.

But it’s not just neuronal connections being made — the orofacial muscles are getting stronger, and the facial skeleton itself is making adjustments as teeth begin to come in, allowing for more sophisticated babbling. The child isn’t just making sounds anymore — they’re beginning to understand that these sounds have some meaning.

They’re entering the world of the alphabetic principle.

At its core, the alphabetic principle is the understanding that letters of the alphabet represent specific sounds in spoken language (unless the language is Chinese or Japanese, which use different but equally fascinating systems). It's the realization that these sounds, or phonemes, can be blended together to form words.

A “phoneme” is a sound, or a group of different sounds.

For example, the letter "B" makes the "buh" sound, while the letter "A" can make the "ah" sound. By saying “buh”, “ah”, “t”… you’re pronouncing the phonemes of the word “bat”.

When you hear a child saying “mama”, “dada”, “bruhbruh”, you’re hearing them associate phonemes with meaning, specifically their parents and siblings, and other familiar people and things around them.

But this is just the beginning of the alphabetic principle, and it only gets cooler from here.

The Pre-alphabetic Stage

The pre-alphabetic stage runs from birth to about 3 years old, although children are all different and there is some wiggle room in these age ranges.

I want you to picture a toddler, around 3 years old, flipping through the pages of a colorful book. At this pre-alphabetic stage, they’re not making the connection between letters and sounds. Instead, they’re developing what’s known as phonological awareness - the ability to recognize and manipulate the sounds in spoken language.

Specifically, they’re learning to identify syllables, clusters of syllables, and phonemes.

One of the funnest methods to help a child identify syllables is to have them place their hand under their chin, and then say a word. Every time the mandible drops, that’s a syllable.

Go ahead and do it yourself right now. It really is kind of fun.

“Mama” has to two syllables, “papa” has two syllables, but “mom” and “dad” only have one syllable.

As this is happening, the auditory cortex is processing the sounds the child hears from both their own mouths and the parent or teacher with them. This is crucial for distinguishing between different phonemes, and helps create powerful connections throughout the brain.

At the same time, Broca's area in the frontal cortex is developing, which will eventually support the ability to produce speech sounds and engage in phonological processing.

For a 3 year old, the orofacial muscles are also undergoing significant changes. The lips, tongue, and jaw are learning to work together to produce a wide range of sounds. This is absolutely essential for articulating the precise sounds needed for speech and, later, for reading.

Partial Alphabetic Stage

As the child enters preschool between the ages of 3 and 4, they’re entering the partial alphabetic stage.

This is where they begin to recognize some letters and their corresponding sounds. Typically this lines up with the letters in their name. For example, if their name starts with an ‘S’, they’ll start to match the phoneme /s/ up with the letter.

At the neurological level, the visual word form area (VWFA) in the occipito-temporal region is becoming more specialized in recognizing letters. This is where the brain processes the visual features of letters and words, allowing the child to identify and distinguish between different characters.

But the child’s knowledge is far from complete. They may confuse similar-looking letters like "b" and "d" or struggle to blend sounds together smoothly.

The orofacial muscles are also continuing to develop during this stage, allowing them to produce more precise speech sounds, which is crucial for accurately articulating the sounds associated with each letter.

Full Alphabetic Stage

By the time they reach kindergarten, they’ve entered into the full alphabetic stage.

At this point, they’ve mastered most letter-sound relationships, save a few here and there.

In the brain, the temporoparietal junction, or TPJ, and inferior frontal gyrus, or IFG, are now far more active during phonological processing and decoding.

Decoding is where you look at a word, and break it down into its phonemes and syllables.

The TPJ is involved in mapping sounds onto letters, matching them up in the child’s mind.

The IFG helps to do this too, but it also processes the motor planning of speech. As the child learns to decode words by sounding them out letter by letter, the IFG helps to process and produce the necessary speech sounds.

The orofacial muscles have also developed significantly by this stage, meaning the child can now produce all the sounds needed for speech and reading, including more complex consonant blends like "bl" or "st."

Of course, this is assuming they have their front teeth. My son is currently missing his, which makes for some seriously adorable reading sounds.

This full alphabetic stage is where my son is at right now, and the progress he’s made by blending phonemes is really cool to watch in real time.

Something else you’ll see at this stage is something that doesn’t get near the attention it deserves — children beginning to “encode”.

Encoding is the exact opposite of “decoding”, meaning that instead of breaking down a word into its phonemes, they learn to spell words by their sounds instead.

For example, if a child was looking at a picture of a dog, the ability to sound out the phonemes — /d/ /o/ /g/, and then turn that into the letters d - o - g, would be encoding.

Looking at the word “dog” and then sounding out each individual phoneme would be decoding.

Consolidated Alphabetic Stage

As the child progresses through elementary school, somewhere around the age of 7 they enter what’s known as the consolidated alphabetic stage.

At this point, reading becomes increasingly fluent and automatic.

They move away from decoding individual letters to recognizing larger chunks of words, such as prefixes, suffixes, and syllables.

In the brain, a structure known as the putamen, as well as the cerebellum are now more involved in automatizing reading skills.

This is building off of what’s known as “sight words”.

During the full alphabetic stage, the child begins seeing certain words a whole lot more than other words. For example, the word “this” is everywhere. You don’t want to waste time and cognitive effort trying to decode it, so instead the child learns to just recognize it, and keep reading without slowing down.

Over time, more words naturally become “sight words”, and others are actually encouraged by teachers to become “sight words”.

Then, you also have the cerebellum contributing to the coordination and timing of the various processes involved in reading, such as eye movements, phonological processing, and articulation.

The child’s orofacial muscles are now fully developed, allowing them to produce all the sounds of their language with ease. This automaticity in speech production further supports fluent reading, as they can quickly and accurately articulate the words they’re reading.

It’s amazing how the human brain is perfectly adapted for reading. I truly believe that reading is one of the most important things anyone can do. It fosters creativity and empowers you to see the world through others’ eyes.

Part of my goal with this Substack is to inspire others to read more, and if you’re anything like me, breaking down processes like this can be super helpful in motivating you to do that.

Plus it’s just cool.