After being laid off due to the shift in the economy, Grand Rapids-based entrepreneur Kellie Kalish, 29, decided to fill a niche she discovered as a college student. While studying the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), Kalish was unable to find commercially produced study materials featuring the IPA. In response, she set out to create high-quality flashcards that were as aesthetically appealing as they were functional.
Since its creation in 1886, The IPA has been used by linguists, translators, language teachers and students, as well as entertainers, to provide a standardized method of transcribing sounds within languages. The system is detailed enough to allow a user to speak words they may not understand in an unfamiliar language, without an accent, simply by transcribing the sounds into the IPA and then reading the transcription phonetically.
Kalish learned German at the age of six while attending an Austrian elementary school. Her parents, Pastor Bruce and Patty Kalish, worked in and around Eastern Europe training pastors and church leaders. Since then, Kellie Kalish has visited more than 20 countries, lived in five different ones and has had formal language instruction in French, Czech, and Spanish.
"I think my brain developed linguistically at an early age," she says. "So, languages were something that were always in my life, and I just kind of went with it."
She went on to earn a B.A. with a double major in International Relations and German from GVSU before completing coursework toward her M.A. in TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) at Cornerstone, for which she had to study the IPA. In the past,students used IPA charts, textbooks and DIY flashcard methods; however, most fonts do not support IPA symbols, which makes many of the homemade flashcards inaccurate. Ultimately, this insufficiency inspired Kalish to simultaneously launch Minokidowinan Language Resources and its initial product,
IPAflashcards.
"I didn't actually set out to start a company, initially," explains Kalish. "One thing led to another. I wanted quality, which meant building bigger infrastructures around what I was doing."
Kalish hopes IPAflashcards will help launch the success needed for such a future. At $54, the flashcards seem like expensive study materials, but high prices are commonplace on college campuses and Kalish has produced a high quality product. She has been thorough and thoughtful during the creation of her invention, first by spending time researching the diversity of commercially available flashcards.
"I went through Barnes and Noble, leafed through flashcards and saw what their price points were at, and saw what they were made out of," she says. "I found so many flashcards that were uninteresting and black-and-white, or just data on sheets of paper, not even cardstock."
Kalish choose to make her product differently with a dedication to quality.
"It was hard for me to source a printer," she admits. "Everyone tried to convince me that I should make them to break down so that people would have to buy more, and I didn't want to do that."
She then involved herself in every aspect of the flashcards to create the perfect blend of color, organization and usability.
While showing off a card featuring a diagram of a human head, designed to help users memorize which sounds come from which parts of the speaker's mouth, Kalish's normally soft-spoken voice eagerly explains, "I was excited because the only other example heads I've seen like this look like they've been photocopied 50 times from old textbooks. I wanted something cleaner and more modern, and outlined in blue and white, and crisp, and numbered, and organized." A tall order for local graphic designer Neal Hubert, one contributor to the cards, but clearly Kalish is completely satisfied with the final product -- and one wonders if it would ever have gone to print if she wasn't.
The result is 354 color-coded flashcards, each the size of a playing card with a durable, high-gloss, ultra-violet coating and a texture which will remain comfortable even through multiple hours of late-night study sessions. With these features, the cards are likely to promote themselves through their obvious usability by being the envy of the classroom. In the war between dollar-store disposables and designer desire-ables, only time will tell if Kalish's bold production choices prove lucrative for Minokidowinan, but making a profit isn't Kalish's only goal.
Minokidowinan -- meaning "good words" -- is derived from the endangered language Anishinaabernowin. Kalish became passionate about endangered languages last year when she saw the documentary
The Linguists, which follows field linguists to exotic locations where they are needed to document languages -- using tools like the IPA -- before the language dies along with its last native speaker.
"That's just an insane amount of information that we lose as a society -- as a world -- when we lose a language," says Kalish. "It just fascinated me that these linguists would go into the tribe, learn a language and document it, and help preserve it, and then ultimately, revitalize it within the community. I want to be part of it."
Kalish has decided to contribute to field linguistics financially and through raising awareness. A portion of the profits from the flashcards will be used to fund endangered language research, documentation and revitalization efforts.
Although she hasn't found a specific program to fund yet, Kalish has a few different groups on her radar as well as a survey on her website, so interested parties may make recommendations. She muses about a future when Minokidowinan Language Resources is capable of creating scholarships for individual linguists in need of funding and encourages anyone who knows of field linguistics projects to contact her.
J. Rae Young is a writer, bartender and community volunteer in Grand Rapids. She is a passionate promoter of Grand Rapids' dynamic local music scene, venues and businesses, and an advocate of cultural understanding. She has taught English to primary school students in Tanzania, Africa, and treasures personal growth through travel.
Photos:
Kellie Kalish displays her flashcard designs
Kellie Kalish's office and inventory is mobile in her vehicle (2)
Photos by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved