Hey, quick question.

[conuly]

Ana learned at school that the vowels are A E I O U. Which they are, no arguments from me :)

When she asked later about vowels, rather than just repeat the list I told her that a vowel is basically a sound you can make with your mouth totally open, not even your tongue closing it up.

That worked really well - she immediately tested several sounds and worked out without any help if they were vowels or not. (Yay her!)

But is there some sort of pedagogical reason that the division of letters into vowels and consonants is presented as arbitrary lists instead of simple rules? Like, was I wrong to state it that way?

On a similar note, Evangeline, like many small children, gets the fidgets when she's very tired, and really needs some gentle holding down to fall asleep at naptime. She's not like Ana. She doesn't scream, kick, or - thank god - headbutt, but she *is* pretty creative at these staying awake tactics. Like she breathes funny, making Darth Vader breaths (I know it's intentional on some level because she stops when told to). Or she whispers - mostly babbling, weirdly. The more she fidgets, the tireder she proves to be, and the longer (and sounder) she sleeps when she finally passes out.

So today, at naptime, she was going very quietly yayayayaya and I told her she had to be *quiet*, with a *still mouth*. So she started going ʔʔʔʔʔʔʔ instead. Yes, that's correct - I told her to stop making noises and moving around so she could go to sleep, and she responded with a string of glottal stops. (I told her that she still had to knock it off.)

Of course, it's not like this is a strange sound foreign to the English language, but it still seemed odd to hear her just produce a string of them out of the ether.

Comments

[azarias.livejournal.com]

Probably it's assumed that it's easier to teach a kid -- or an adult learning the language -- to remember five letters that are vowels and class all other letters as not vowels than to teach her to sort out the differences between the sounds so that she can categorize them on her own. But Ana can work it out, so I assume other kids can, too, and ...

Basically, I don't know.

[conuly]

It's assumed wrongly.

It's like giving kids a list of words to memorize and told they're "prepositions" instead of telling them what prepositions do. The second method may take more active brainpower, but it's a heck of a lot easier in the long run.

Or, it's like relying on an increasingly complex system of pictograms instead of developing any form of alphabet (or syllabry or whatnot). Sure, it's more abstract - but once you get beyond concepts like "this is poison" and "a nice lady lives at this house" pictograms aren't gonna cut it anymore.

[conuly]

I'm not frustrated at you, of course.