Welcome to Minspeak 101.  

A young girl who uses Minspeak is going to help you learn how Minspeak works.  Let me introduce her to you.

This is Cathy. 
As you can see, she looks like a fun-loving, active little girl. 
Like most kids, she loves getting presents, riding her tricycle outside, and “dressing-up” for school projects.
But unlike many of her friends, Cathy has complex communication needs and relies on a variety of AAC strategies to communicate.

One of Cathy’s communication strategies is an AAC device that uses the Minspeak system to code and organize words.
Cathy learned the 4 basic and simple rules for how Minspeak works and she was talking!

The first rule Cathy learned is that Minspeak uses pictures to represent vocabulary.  

Cathy’s pictures are simple, familiar, and easy for her to use.    But that is true for ANY Minspeak system, because all Minspeak systems use simple, familiar, easy pictures.

The second rule of any Minspeak system is that Minspeak pictures always mean MORE than one thing.  

In fact, it’s very normal for a picture to mean more than one thing to somebody. 

When Cathy looks at the APPLE, it might remind her of the word apple, or red, or food, or hungry, or eat.  It might even remind her of an Apple computer. 

By using the picture of the apple that is on the front of her Minspeak device, she could say any one of these words.  

How do you think that would work?  After Cathy picks the apple picture, does the Minspeak device magically read her mind and then speak whatever word she’s thinking about.  Of course not. 

The device helps Cathy to say anything she wants to say because of the Third Rule of Minspeak. 

Let’s discover what that is.

The third rule of Minspeak is that Minspeak systems put pictures together to code words.  This rule is really what starts to give children like Cathy a lot of power to communicate.   With only a small set of pictures, she can say lots of words.   

The process of putting pictures together is called Icon Sequencing.  An icon is just another, more technical word for Picture. 

To learn how Cathy talks using Minspeak Icon Sequencing, we need to introduce you to some more pictures that are on the front of her Minspeak device.

There’s a picture we like to call “Mr. Action Man.”    The story behind this picture is that he’s a happy, handyman and you can give him ANYTHING and he knows what to DO with it.

Then there’s Old Mother Hubbard and she keeps things in her cupboard. 
Finally, there’s a Paintbrush, and we use the paintbrush to describe what we can only imagine.

Each of these simple pictures represents a category of words, like Mr. Action Man for Verbs, Mother Hubbard for Nouns, and Paintbrush for Adjectives.    Let’s see how Cathy would use these pictures to say the words she wants to say.

What do you think Cathy is going to say first?  Let’s find out!
It’s the word “eat.”

What is she going to say next?  
Now she says “food.”

Still using the apple picture, what else will she say?
Why, of course, she’s “hungry.”

Let’s switch pictures. 
Instead of using the APPLE, Cathy will use the DICE as the first picture in her Icon Sequence. 
Now she can say the word “play.”

By combining DICE and PAINTBRUSH, Cathy says the word “little.”

Now she says the word “game.”
“Play little game” - that starts to sound like a simple sentence, doesn’t it and all Cathy needed was the picture of the DICE!

Cathy can say a lot by putting 2 pictures together into an icon sequence.  But sometimes, in order to say even more words, she puts together 3 pictures.   
What could Cathy say if she picked the Apple, then the Dog, and then Mr. Action Man?  
Of course, “bite” - because a dog might bite.

It’s now time to learn the 4th fourth rule of Minspeak, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise, because I think you are starting to see that Minspeak Icon Sequences follow PATTERNS. 

That’s the fourth rule of Minspeak.  Minspeak icon sequences follow patterns.

These patterns are what makes learning and using Minspeak so easy.  You are not learning hundreds and hundreds of icon sequences.  NO, instead you learn a group of meanings for a small set of pictures and then you learn the patterns for saying those words.

Cathy easily learned the meanings of a small set of pictures on the front of her AAC device, and then she learned to put Mr. Action Man at the END of her icon sequences in order to say ANY verb she wanted.

Cathy has experienced and learned about the JUICE picture.  She uses this picture to not only say she wants to drink something because she is thirsty, but also to describe the juice in the glass.

She learned the patterns for using the THUMB UP and THUMB DOWN to do OPPOSITE Meanings. 

That’s another of the patterns that might be in a Minspeak system. 

There’s a lot more that Cathy could show you about how a Minspeak system works, but the simple fact is that ALL Minspeak systems follow these 4 Basic Rules - even if you live in the United States or in Hong Kong where Cathy lives.

There are many different devices that use Minspeak and people all around the world, speaking different languages, use Minspeak.  In these different countries, they have different Minspeak Application Programs - or MAPs -  that you can use as soon as you get your Minspeak device.  
But, whatever the device, or the language spoken, or the Minspeak Application Program used, Cathy and other children and adults using Minspeak systems can speak for themselves and say hundreds of words, phrases, and sentences.  And it’s not hard work at all.