Re: Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis

Krista Casada wrote:
> In kindergarten I was deeply offended to find that my teacher
 > considered the vowel sound in "can" to be different from that
> in "pet"; they weren't for ME! So I have the utmost sympathy
> for your son's skepticism.
Those poor grade school teachers, getting textbooks that reflect the
dialect in New York City (or wherever) and having to answer questions
from all kinds of curious kids over what the difference between those
two sounds is.  Then they lose their kids' respect when they try to
explain that there is a difference between [a] and [o], when all us kids
could see there isn't a lick of difference.  To us it was just another
example of the stupid teachers' books (parse that either way) inventing
lies again, like "Mercury is the hottest planet", and "The continents
will drift apart by several hundred miles within 100 years".


Carl Banks