Automating Color-coding for Pronunciation-Guided Tibetan Text: Using regular expressions to generate HTML color codes for the four main sound profiles within central standard Tibetan

Reading is a complex and difficult skill. The main difficulty beginning readers face is learning which letters represent which sounds—and then getting used to those patterns by reading them, again and again, in different combinations and contexts. It takes practice to learn how to read. Research also shows that the easier reading is, the more likely it is that readers will read. Readers are discouraged by difficult texts; they are encouraged by easier ones. That’s why the goal of the author, editor, and publisher of today is to create easy-to-read text. If we’re thinking about beginning readers, it’s important to maximize the work we can do for them. The text needs to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. In the case of Tibetan language learning materials, the question is then this: How can we provide beginning readers with the maximum amount of clear, consistent clues that link symbol to sound? This is the goal of color-coding text for beginning readers of the Tibetan language