4 ms·

It would be nice to replicate in other languages. In Spanish and German, reading is almost phonetic, unlike English. Anyway, from my experience with my daughte

It would be nice to replicate in other languages. In Spanish and German, reading is almost phonetic, unlike English. Anyway, from my experience with my daughter, the step from single letters to silabes is difficult.

taeric 6mo ago
"Reading is almost phonetic" is a largely meaningless phrase. There are some orthographies that are more regular than others. But, indeed, the very confusion people love to talk about with English only works if it is phonetic, but ambiguous. And just solving for one form of ambiguity does not, necessarily, help. Consider contronyms. Words that are literally their own opposites. I'm convinced the main thing lost in getting kids to read, is that too many mistake interaction with the words as automatic. It isn't. Taking apart a word symbol by symbol and putting it back together in a different form is the entire point of teaching how to read. And if you don't teach kids to do that with words, are you surprised when they can't do it with equations?
- tuukkah 6mo ago
  I think you misunderstand. In a largely phonetic language, almost everyone learns to read in one school semester, after which it's a fully solved problem - no spelling bees or anything. Peculiarly, you don't need spelling bees either when learning English later. ("Contronyms" and "words" are orthogonal to reading as they apply to spoken language too (and it's very much automatic).)
  - taeric 6mo ago
    I think you don't understand the various orthographies. Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic. Think emoji. And, of course, I'm summarizing very very briefly.
    - tuukkah 6mo ago
      Of course, you don't have to believe me; you could also read about the orthographic depth of English vs other languages on Wikipedia or something. "In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly.[1] That is to say, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, and the spelling of words is very consistent. Examples include Japanese kana, Hindi, Lao (since 1975), Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, Latin, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Welsh. [--] English is unusual because it combines deep orthography, with multiple possible sounds for many letters.[2] This makes it among the most difficult languages in the world to learn to read." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth
      - taeric 6mo ago
        From the intro of the page you link: "The orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence." So, sure, if you want to discuss about how English orthography is deep, go for it. I won't even really disagree. Quite the contrary. The opening claim was that it wasn't phonetic, though. That is a different thing. It is funny seeing Japanese as the first example in your quote, as it has both a phonetic syllabary (two, actually) and a non-phonetic logography. That is, you literally have to learn to read a non-phonetic orthography in order to read Japanese!
        gus_massa 6mo ago
        [Opening claimer here. Interesting discussion!] Probably I missed the exact names, I guess I should have used "deep" vs "shallow", instead of "phonetic" vs "not phonetic". The problem is that there are so many rules that it looks like each word has a special rule. I agree that Spanish also have subtle rules, we have some unusual cases here in Buenos Aires, in es-ar-bue the last "d" in "ciudad" is very faint and we say the "ll" almost like a English "sh" instead or an English "lee". The other day I was joking with my wife, and I told her that to make the list of text transformation to allow a Spanish speaker to read German enters in a napkin: v -> f w -> v ei -> ia [in English, something like "ee ah"] ie -> ii [in English, something like "ee ee"] eu -> oi [in English, something like "oh ee"] sch -> sh [loaned from English, perhaps "y" in pure Spanish but it's confusing] I probably missed a few cases (like the g), and the pronunciation would not be perfect, but probably close enough to be inteligible by a friendly listener. I can't imagine how to do a similar table in English, at least a table that enters in a napkin. Let's start with the infamous case of "yesterday" does it sound like "today" or "Friday"? How is the rule? Can you classify all the words in this table https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/-1/day/1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/... ?
- btreesOfSpring 6mo ago
  There is a reason why German kids don't have spelling bees.
  - taeric 6mo ago
    And, of course, the main reason we have spelling bees is that people enjoy them.
    - phainopepla2 6mo ago
      But they are only possible because the phonetic rules of English are far from consistent
      - taeric 6mo ago
        This feels like a strong reason to keep both, to me. People enjoy them, and they enable fun games. :D
        phainopepla2 6mo ago
        I completely agree. I love the weirdness of English and would hate it to have it smoothed out
    - pessimizer 6mo ago
      In Western alphabetic languages other than French, English, and Portuguese, not being able to spell the word is virtually identical to not knowing how to say the word. People who spell words wrong in Spanish are either on the one hand mixing up "k" and "que," "b" and "v," maybe screwing up "c" with "k," "s" and "que" or forgetting the accent placement rules; or on the other hand they've literally heard and said the word incorrectly all their lives. Also, even the misspellings in Spanish will 99.9% result in perfect pronunciation. The accent rules are just about where you're allowed to omit it, or when you add it to a one-syllable word and it doesn't actually indicate an accent. The error you're most likely to make is to put one in when it is unnecessary.
tuukkah 6mo ago
You should think "the step from single sounds to syllables", and the way to do that is to begin with the easy syllables like "tu", "mi", "el" (not unlike the multiplication or addition tables) before moving to longer ones. [And note that M alone is not "em", it has to be "m" when learning to read - a common pedagogical mistake! M + I makes "mi" not "emi", so M must be "m".] At least that's how children are taught in Finnish schools since sometime before the 1980s, and since then almost everyone learns to read during the first school semester. Also, one simple and efficient protection against dyslexia is to play the Graphogame (or similar) to get a lot of repetition with the sound-letter correspondences while learning to read (for various reasons, some brains take longer to build the necessary connections and you want to avoid the negative affects of learning slower than your peers if you can).
- taeric 6mo ago
  I contest this. There is no correct "step from" in this. There is a post-hoc explanation for why a lot of things work. And there is some benefit in regularity. But most of this is, as stated, post hoc. Consider, how do you read "f=ma", or "e=mc^2"? Why don't those follow the same rules? They use the same symbols as our alphabets, after all? Or consider "do re mi" is pronounced differently from "do re me". And, amusingly, most people will not read those correctly. This doesn't rob the names of the notes as meaningless. Nor does it mean that they are not taught correctly. But you learn to interact with the symbols. Not merely transcribe them between representations.
- gus_massa 6mo ago
  I agree. My older daughter was learning to read before school, and we started with the usual here in Argentina: ma, me, mi, mo, mu pa, pe, pi, po, pu sa, se, si, so, su ... after a few more rows, we expected her to generalize because she is very smart, but it's harder than what we expected and we have to told her all the 21x5 cases. (The first cases were harder, and the lasts got easier.). I don't remember about the longer silabes like "pra", "bla", ... and there are weird words like "consternado" but I guess it was not obvious.
  - tuukkah 6mo ago

taeric 6mo ago

"Reading is almost phonetic" is a largely meaningless phrase. There are some orthographies that are more regular than others. But, indeed, the very confusion people love to talk about with English only works if it is phonetic, but ambiguous. And just solving for one form of ambiguity does not, necessarily, help. Consider contronyms. Words that are literally their own opposites. I'm convinced the main thing lost in getting kids to read, is that too many mistake interaction with the words as automatic. It isn't. Taking apart a word symbol by symbol and putting it back together in a different form is the entire point of teaching how to read. And if you don't teach kids to do that with words, are you surprised when they can't do it with equations?

tuukkah 6mo ago
I think you misunderstand. In a largely phonetic language, almost everyone learns to read in one school semester, after which it's a fully solved problem - no spelling bees or anything. Peculiarly, you don't need spelling bees either when learning English later. ("Contronyms" and "words" are orthogonal to reading as they apply to spoken language too (and it's very much automatic).)
- taeric 6mo ago
  I think you don't understand the various orthographies. Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic. Think emoji. And, of course, I'm summarizing very very briefly.
  - tuukkah 6mo ago
    Of course, you don't have to believe me; you could also read about the orthographic depth of English vs other languages on Wikipedia or something. "In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly.[1] That is to say, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, and the spelling of words is very consistent. Examples include Japanese kana, Hindi, Lao (since 1975), Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, Latin, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Welsh. [--] English is unusual because it combines deep orthography, with multiple possible sounds for many letters.[2] This makes it among the most difficult languages in the world to learn to read." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth
    - taeric 6mo ago
      From the intro of the page you link: "The orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence." So, sure, if you want to discuss about how English orthography is deep, go for it. I won't even really disagree. Quite the contrary. The opening claim was that it wasn't phonetic, though. That is a different thing. It is funny seeing Japanese as the first example in your quote, as it has both a phonetic syllabary (two, actually) and a non-phonetic logography. That is, you literally have to learn to read a non-phonetic orthography in order to read Japanese!
      - gus_massa 6mo ago
        [Opening claimer here. Interesting discussion!] Probably I missed the exact names, I guess I should have used "deep" vs "shallow", instead of "phonetic" vs "not phonetic". The problem is that there are so many rules that it looks like each word has a special rule. I agree that Spanish also have subtle rules, we have some unusual cases here in Buenos Aires, in es-ar-bue the last "d" in "ciudad" is very faint and we say the "ll" almost like a English "sh" instead or an English "lee". The other day I was joking with my wife, and I told her that to make the list of text transformation to allow a Spanish speaker to read German enters in a napkin: v -> f w -> v ei -> ia [in English, something like "ee ah"] ie -> ii [in English, something like "ee ee"] eu -> oi [in English, something like "oh ee"] sch -> sh [loaned from English, perhaps "y" in pure Spanish but it's confusing] I probably missed a few cases (like the g), and the pronunciation would not be perfect, but probably close enough to be inteligible by a friendly listener. I can't imagine how to do a similar table in English, at least a table that enters in a napkin. Let's start with the infamous case of "yesterday" does it sound like "today" or "Friday"? How is the rule? Can you classify all the words in this table https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/-1/day/1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/... ?
btreesOfSpring 6mo ago
There is a reason why German kids don't have spelling bees.
- taeric 6mo ago
  And, of course, the main reason we have spelling bees is that people enjoy them.
  - phainopepla2 6mo ago
    But they are only possible because the phonetic rules of English are far from consistent
    - taeric 6mo ago
      This feels like a strong reason to keep both, to me. People enjoy them, and they enable fun games. :D
      - phainopepla2 6mo ago
        I completely agree. I love the weirdness of English and would hate it to have it smoothed out
  - pessimizer 6mo ago
    In Western alphabetic languages other than French, English, and Portuguese, not being able to spell the word is virtually identical to not knowing how to say the word. People who spell words wrong in Spanish are either on the one hand mixing up "k" and "que," "b" and "v," maybe screwing up "c" with "k," "s" and "que" or forgetting the accent placement rules; or on the other hand they've literally heard and said the word incorrectly all their lives. Also, even the misspellings in Spanish will 99.9% result in perfect pronunciation. The accent rules are just about where you're allowed to omit it, or when you add it to a one-syllable word and it doesn't actually indicate an accent. The error you're most likely to make is to put one in when it is unnecessary.

tuukkah 6mo ago

You should think "the step from single sounds to syllables", and the way to do that is to begin with the easy syllables like "tu", "mi", "el" (not unlike the multiplication or addition tables) before moving to longer ones. [And note that M alone is not "em", it has to be "m" when learning to read - a common pedagogical mistake! M + I makes "mi" not "emi", so M must be "m".] At least that's how children are taught in Finnish schools since sometime before the 1980s, and since then almost everyone learns to read during the first school semester. Also, one simple and efficient protection against dyslexia is to play the Graphogame (or similar) to get a lot of repetition with the sound-letter correspondences while learning to read (for various reasons, some brains take longer to build the necessary connections and you want to avoid the negative affects of learning slower than your peers if you can).

taeric 6mo ago
I contest this. There is no correct "step from" in this. There is a post-hoc explanation for why a lot of things work. And there is some benefit in regularity. But most of this is, as stated, post hoc. Consider, how do you read "f=ma", or "e=mc^2"? Why don't those follow the same rules? They use the same symbols as our alphabets, after all? Or consider "do re mi" is pronounced differently from "do re me". And, amusingly, most people will not read those correctly. This doesn't rob the names of the notes as meaningless. Nor does it mean that they are not taught correctly. But you learn to interact with the symbols. Not merely transcribe them between representations.
gus_massa 6mo ago
I agree. My older daughter was learning to read before school, and we started with the usual here in Argentina: ma, me, mi, mo, mu pa, pe, pi, po, pu sa, se, si, so, su ... after a few more rows, we expected her to generalize because she is very smart, but it's harder than what we expected and we have to told her all the 21x5 cases. (The first cases were harder, and the lasts got easier.). I don't remember about the longer silabes like "pra", "bla", ... and there are weird words like "consternado" but I guess it was not obvious.
- tuukkah 6mo ago