Re: Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis

Good for your son! Perhaps we have an innate understanding of these things
that, for many, eventually becomes corrupted or suppressed by orthography
(at least when the orthography is as off as English's).

I remember insisting when I was younger that 'tree' must be spelled 'chree',
because the word began with /tS/, and we had learned that /tS/ was spelled
'ch'. I was told in resonse that it did not begin with /tS/, but with 't'.
While I was right, I was also wrong ... since /S/ is automatically inserted
into a /tr/ sequence, it makes sense to spell it with a 't' as well.
Josh


On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> For school today my 4-year-old had to bring in a picture of something
> starting with the letter O.  Having learned that "O says [a]" ([a]
> being the sound of CLOTH in our 'lect), he immediately thought of
> "octopus".  But that seems to be the standard O word in alphabet books
> these days, so my wife thought that too many kids were liable to bring
> one of those in.  So we set about thinking of other things that start
> with O.
>
> I suggested "owl", but he sounded it out and informed me that "owl"
> starts with [&] and therefore would be spelled with the letter "A"!  I
> had to agree that [&] is indeed the first component of our MOUTH
> diphthong, but I pointed out that we have had discussions before about
> how spelling doesn't always work the way you think it should.  He
> remained skeptical.
>
> We compromised on "orange".  He was still iffy - we're in the
> [O`r\.@ndZ] camp rather than, say, the [a.r\@ndZ] camp, and NORTH is
> not CLOTH, but it was closer than that crazy "owl" idea.
>
> I did try to think of other words besides "octopus" that are spelled
> with O and start with the CLOTH sound, but of course under the
> pressure of trying to get ready to go to school, couldn't think of
> any.  Naturally, after I dropped him off I had ocelots and oxen
> chasing ostriches and otters through my head...
>
> Anyway, I'm proud of my boy's phonetic analysis, if not his spelling
> ability.   I'll make a linguist of him yet. :)
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>

Reply