The sentence above reads: "The ice angel gave the owl a ring." It might be meaningless, but it illustrates some of the system's more unusual sound shapes.

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Some comments so far:

A big problem with ITA was that phonetic spelling doesn't account for regional accents. Anyone used to hearing words pronounced with a Scots, Welsh or Scouse accent was completely lost.

Rod Maxwell, Scotland

I am dyslexic and learned ITA at school. I was already able to read and write simple words when I arrived at school but ITA crippled me. This was because when I wrote the words I knew to be correct I was told they were wrong.

Chris, UK

We could write notes to each other without our parents or teachers in the grown-up children's classes being able read them. Since moving to London I haven't found anyone I can pass ITA notes to during long meetings.

jæn (Jane), UK

I was in my second year's teaching in Luton in 1968. ITA seemed to be a brilliant way of pushing the children on and they learned to read much earlier than usual. But - and the but is enourmous - some could not make the transition. I don't think they'll ever unlearn ITA spelling.

Mrs Patricia Collett, England

I had a couple of Ladybird books written in ITA, including one about fishermen and their trawlers - lots of scope for unusual sounds like halibut and sturgeon. I don't recall it doing me any harm.

Chloe Williams, England

I have to think about how to spell some very simple words because they contain either a silent or mispronounced letter. I don't think ITA damaged my ability to spell, but has sown a seed in my subconscious that acts as a hurdle.

Sebastian Andrews, England

I love ITA and have a book of famous quotes, speeches and poetry all "translated" into ITA, including Winston Churchill's war speeches.

Anthony Richards, UK

ITA made me the bad speller I am today. Yet we make same mistakes again and again. My son now learns to read by word recognition, associating the appearance of a word with a picture over and over until he knows it. When he meets a new word, he can't put the letters together to form the word. Instead the teacher tells him the word and asks him to memorise it.

Trevor Hentzschel, UK

ITA is a classic case of missing the point. If you are taught English - inconsistencies and all - from an early age, you develop an intuition for how words should look.

Doug Trumpshaw, UK

I went to a conservative school and saw the spelling issue from the other end of the telescope. Our teacher passed out a workbook on spelling, warning: "The first thing you need to learn is that the same sound can be spelled different ways." She was referring to the workbook's title, Phonics Can Be Fun.

Harry Matthews, USA

It was used to teach us French pronunciation but the teacher omitted to find out if it had been used to teach us English (which it hadn't). A clever way to ensure the linguistically challenged English never managed to learn a second language.

Malc, Brit in Turkey

As a child my family moved from London to Newcastle where my new ITA school forbade me from using the ordinary alphabet. My parents (one Scot, one Geordie) were baffled when I informed them that people wrote in a different language up North.

Neville Cooper, UK