Writing as a historical linguist, I can tell you that not only does Jed have his diachronic phonology right, but he has some very good ideas about how to present such material to a secondary/middle English class (sorry, I don't remember which level). I've done things on Shakespeare's pronunciation where I lead up from an OE Lord's Prayer to Chaucer to Shakespeare. They get to use rhymes to remember pronunciations, and they get to read a short scene using early 17th c. pronunciation, and they love it.
I've also, on invitation, talked to high school classes about spelling and why it doesn't match pronunciation. We talk about whether it should, what problems spelling reform presents, what's good about our spelling system, all of which they find engaging. When they understand that our spelling fits late 15th c. London English pretty well but no one talks that way anymore, they also come to understand that pronunciation changes a lot more rapidly and easily than spelling does and that spelling doesn't have to have a lot to do with speech. One exercise I'll use is to take them through basic phonics letter-to-sound rules, without even getting into the "i before e" stuff, which, by the way, doesn't work very well, and then have them go through a short passage letter by letter and figure out how many letters actually have the sound they are supposed to. The number tends to be around 50%, which surprises them.
By the way, if you want a clear set of spelling to pronunciation rules, go to the chapter on spelling in Greenbaum's An Oxford English Grammar. It's clear, well-written, and much more thorough than anything I've seen in textbooks. A great source.
Now, if I could have the time to teach them a little phonetics to go along with phonics...
Herb
Subject: Re: Spelling
Hey Paulette,
I'm certainly not a phonetician, and I hope someone more versed in diachronic phonology will offer a more cogent explanation if necessary, but I'll be glad to share what I do in the classroom.
The basic intrigue of the silent e is that it was by no means always silent. As far as I know, the e on the end of words like name was pronounced well into Middle English, even approaching Shakespeare's time in some dialects of English.
We've got this notion now that a silent e "lengthens" the preceding vowel (Tom vs. tome), and this certainly is true (in most cases). However, this is a function that only occurred after the Great Vowel Shift somewhere in the 1500s. That e used to do a whole lot more work before the changes in pronunciation took place.
So, name used to be pronounced so that it rhymed with comma (and the verb come used to be pronounced exactly like comma).
My students find this hilarious, and I hear more than one "no way!" So, we go together to sources like the OED, and we listened to lots of Middle English (great way to get those Chaucer requirements in!). As we followed along with a Modern English translation, the students could see that, indeed, that "pesky" silent e used to be pronounced everywhere! We could also hear the differences in the vowels that preceded those e's.
It may not be a party, but the students seem to like it well enough -- they get to listen to some multimedia materials, do a little research, and they gain a bit of perspective on another spelling anomaly.
This bit of basics seems to be sufficient for tenth graders (minus terms like diachronic, and Great Vowel Shift) even if its simplicity would make a phonetician cringe.
I'd love to hear more ideas on teaching spelling because that is one area that can be difficult to "spice up" and make more interesting!
Jed
Paulette Romano <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Jed,
Please share the silent e rule!
Paulette
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
*****************************************************************
John (Jed) E. Dews
Instructor, Undergraduate Linguistics
MA-TESOL/Applied Linguistics Program
English Department, 213 Morgan Hall (Office)
University of Alabama
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
