At 1:56 pm +0200 21/5/02, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
[snip]
>
>I know French children used to learn to read and write using a "syllabaire",
>i.e. words were cut in syllables, and each syllable was learnt separately.
>Only
>at a latter stage children were taught to split the syllables into letters.
>Something like 25 years ago the French Education Nationale decided to change
>the learning method from the "syllabaire" to the "méthode globale"
[etc - snipped after being read with great interest]
>
>So you can imagine how heartedly I agree with the statement that syllabaries
>are easier to learn than alphabets :)) .
Very interesting. AFAIK nothing like the "syllabaire" was ever used in
English; I guess French having a greater ratio of open to blocked syllables
than English probably makes it a more suitable approach.
Anyway, I'm becoming more convinced that BrSc must use a syllabary
:)
Ray.
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Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
GEORGE STEINER.
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