Intrigued by the title? Wondering if this is about the three
stages of hospice care or the sequel to the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love?
Well, I could take it in either of those directions, but the real story is much
more mundane. It’s about spelling.
I’ve had this conversation often with my daughter Talia, who
endured three years of trying to explain to first graders in Argentina how
these three words could possibly rhyme. (Or should I say “righm” or “riem”?) As
speakers of a logical, ordered and coherent language known as Spanish, where
everything is spelled precisely how it sounds according to simple rules, they
must think that English is absolutely insane. And when it comes to spelling,
they’re right! (Ryte, riet, rite, rhyte?)
This came up in a little poem I was doing with 2nd
graders about Grandpa Grigg and a pig and as native speakers, they were
non-plussed. Having hung out around dry, fry, fly, my, pry, sly, sky, sty, shy,
spy, spry, try, why, spent time with high and nigh and their cousins, blight,
flight, might, night, right, sight, tight and had their share of pie, lie, tie,
weird spellings of same-sound endings is just part of their linguistic
landscape.
And more to come. Add to cry, sigh, die the words buy, chai, hi, rye and any wonder why kids are so confused? Imagine them writing (wryting? wrighting?) a little story that begins “Kie goes to trie to bie some chie and marble rie on the way to see The Life of Pie…" and getting back the corrections from the teacher: "Kai goes to try to buy some Chai and marble rye on the way to the Life of Pi." Can you blame the kid if he looks at it and wonderwie why ?
And more to come. Add to cry, sigh, die the words buy, chai, hi, rye and any wonder why kids are so confused? Imagine them writing (wryting? wrighting?) a little story that begins “Kie goes to trie to bie some chie and marble rie on the way to see The Life of Pie…" and getting back the corrections from the teacher: "Kai goes to try to buy some Chai and marble rye on the way to the Life of Pi." Can you blame the kid if he looks at it and wonder
Yup, English is entirely loco— a word, by the way,
which could only be spelled “loco” in Spanish, but might be spelled be lowco or
luoco or loughco (think row, quo, dough) in English. I imagine this is partly due to the mutt nature of the current vernacular. Current English is so interwoven with other languages that it defies
the neat and tidy patterns of its pedigree neighbors. (Or naybors, nabors,
nebors).
Wryting this is making me tighred so I’m going to sine off
and say “By!”
Or is it “Bye?”
Good morning all of you confession readers!
ReplyDeleteI understand some of you would like to comment, but can't make it work on your computer. Just in case it might give me some company in this lonely little box I will give you some instructions based upon how I do it. It may look complicated, but it's easy once you get used to it...
1) Go to the bottom of a post and see the blue words, "No comments". Click those words.
2) The page will blink and then you'll see the words, "Post a comment" in black. Click those words and the comment box will appear.
3) Type what you want to say in the box.
4) Now here's the part that may have hung some of you up. You will see that it says, "Comment as". And then you'll see a drop-down menu of various companies with which you will have to register for a profile. (I already had a Google profile, so I select that.) If you're somewhat distrustful of the internet and privacy issues then you might stop here. Otherwise, select one of those profiles in the drop-down menu. Then click, "Publish" (or "Preview", if you'd like).
5) Now you will be directed to your profile login page and you need to sign in to that.
6) The final step is to prove that you're not a robot. That can be particularly difficult to do since many brilliant people are working very hard at minimizing the difference. You will see some unintelligible words, letters and pictures that you can hardly see. You have to type those into a little box. Then if Blogspot is satisfied that you have proven yourself to be human, then your comment will be posted and it will be left to the rest of us to decide. (Have I passed the Turing test? Ah, now there's another wrinkle!)
Good luck everyone! And let me know if you have any questions.
Lisa