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conuly
(I finally set up my wireless again, so I'm totally upstairs while typing. This either rocks or sucks depending on how much computer time you figure I'll have...!)
Their mother hadn't sent Ana's vacation homework up with her, which meant I got stuck with it. That's all right, she just kinda plowed through it. (And yes, I *do* think vacation homework for kindergarten is silly, but I'm told that the other kids in her class have parents who want MORE homework. The mind boggles, let me tell you.)
One of Ana's homeworks (she only has three left for the weekend - the daily "what the weather is" picture, her "my favorite thing I did this week" picture and two sentences, and a math set (they're working with coins) that she didn't want to finish) involved rhyming words. There were four words in each row (in four different rows), three of which rhymed. This was pretty badly done as the non-rhyming word always made a minimal pair with a rhyming word - bug, rug, and rag, for example. It would've been more challenging if they hadn't. But I digress.
The final row had these four words: pin, pen, ten, hen.
Can you see the problem with that? Say the list aloud. If you automatically figure out the problem, gold star! If not, go here. As it happens, I have the pin-pen merger. I think I must have gotten it from my dad, as neither my mother nor sister has it and they used to tease me about it. (Because I didn't get enough of that at school, guys?) I remember sitting in speech (therapy) lessons as a kid, the only year I had actual instruction in those, working it out in my head how weird it was that there was no short-e before n, even when it's written in that way! I literally don't hear it when other people say it unless I'm listening for it, and I feel as though I'm twisting my mouth unnaturally to produce it myself.
So when I saw this I listened with great interest to see what Ana would do.
She carefully read the words (didn't have to sound them out!), and as soon as she got to pin and pen she stopped. Read them again, the whole list. Frowned. Sounded each word out carefully. "Connie, they all rhyme!"
So what do I do? Do I tell her to ignore her instincts and fill out the words that look like they rhyme? That's what she used to do when she was three. Do I let her fill out all of them and look like she didn't get it at all? I compromised by telling her that there's a good reason they put four rhyming words there, telling her to fill them all in, and writing a note to her teacher explaining this. Then, she she was done, I explained the pin-pen merger and talked her through the steps of a simple linguistic survey. We're totally stopping family members to see who has it and who doesn't today!
[Poll #1385210]
This isn't the first time I've had a language quibble with Ana's homework. Once she had to do "initial sounds that match" and one of the examples was a P word with a "pan". Except that I generally say skillet, and she generally says skillet, and when we don't say skillet we say frying pan. But she breezed right through that without a thought, proving that she understands very well how to do worksheets.
Their mother hadn't sent Ana's vacation homework up with her, which meant I got stuck with it. That's all right, she just kinda plowed through it. (And yes, I *do* think vacation homework for kindergarten is silly, but I'm told that the other kids in her class have parents who want MORE homework. The mind boggles, let me tell you.)
One of Ana's homeworks (she only has three left for the weekend - the daily "what the weather is" picture, her "my favorite thing I did this week" picture and two sentences, and a math set (they're working with coins) that she didn't want to finish) involved rhyming words. There were four words in each row (in four different rows), three of which rhymed. This was pretty badly done as the non-rhyming word always made a minimal pair with a rhyming word - bug, rug, and rag, for example. It would've been more challenging if they hadn't. But I digress.
The final row had these four words: pin, pen, ten, hen.
Can you see the problem with that? Say the list aloud. If you automatically figure out the problem, gold star! If not, go here. As it happens, I have the pin-pen merger. I think I must have gotten it from my dad, as neither my mother nor sister has it and they used to tease me about it. (Because I didn't get enough of that at school, guys?) I remember sitting in speech (therapy) lessons as a kid, the only year I had actual instruction in those, working it out in my head how weird it was that there was no short-e before n, even when it's written in that way! I literally don't hear it when other people say it unless I'm listening for it, and I feel as though I'm twisting my mouth unnaturally to produce it myself.
So when I saw this I listened with great interest to see what Ana would do.
She carefully read the words (didn't have to sound them out!), and as soon as she got to pin and pen she stopped. Read them again, the whole list. Frowned. Sounded each word out carefully. "Connie, they all rhyme!"
So what do I do? Do I tell her to ignore her instincts and fill out the words that look like they rhyme? That's what she used to do when she was three. Do I let her fill out all of them and look like she didn't get it at all? I compromised by telling her that there's a good reason they put four rhyming words there, telling her to fill them all in, and writing a note to her teacher explaining this. Then, she she was done, I explained the pin-pen merger and talked her through the steps of a simple linguistic survey. We're totally stopping family members to see who has it and who doesn't today!
[Poll #1385210]
This isn't the first time I've had a language quibble with Ana's homework. Once she had to do "initial sounds that match" and one of the examples was a P word with a "pan". Except that I generally say skillet, and she generally says skillet, and when we don't say skillet we say frying pan. But she breezed right through that without a thought, proving that she understands very well how to do worksheets.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 05:14 am (UTC)Yes, the vowel sounds ("a" in "father" and "o" in "bother").
For me, they're quite different, but for many, the vowels are similar or identical.
So "baht" (Thai unit of currency) and "bot" (short for "robot") would presumably be pronounced identically for people with the father/bother merger, while I keep them separate.
I'm not sure about tory/torrid or Rosa's/roses either.
Tory/torrid is about the quality of the vowel before the "r"; for me, "Tory" has the vowel of "caught" while "torrid" has the vowel of "cot". I have a non-rhotic accent, though; I'm not sure what the situation is for rhotics (for example, whether all rhotic accents merge those sounds).
Rosa's/roses is whether short unstressed "i" as in "if" merges with shwa or remains distinct. The two words sound different for me ("Rosa's" is "ro-zuhz" while "roses" is "ro-ziz"), and "abbot" and "rabbit" do not rhyme for me, but for people with the merger, "abbot/rabbit" will rhyme and "Rosa's/roses" will sound the same.
Horse and hoarse are also similar, except maybe I linger longer on the ending of hoarse.
The typical difference, as I understand it, is that "horse" has roughly the vowel of "caught" while "hoarse" has roughly the vowel of "coat" -- so, something like "hawrse" vs. "hoh-urse".
I don't see enough similarity in lot and cloth to figure out what could be merging there.
Again, it's about the vowel sound, and I think this is actually a split rather than a merger.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lot-cloth_split#Lot-cloth_split
Essentially, in some words, the "short o" vowel was lengthened in certain environments (before voiceless fricatives as as "ss" "th" "f", and in the word "gone", and for some also before "ng" "g" "k" in some words).
If you pronounce "cot" and "caught" identically, then that split is probably irrelevant for you, since then all "cot" vowels (not only the ones in "cloth" environments) will have merged with "caught".
no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 05:24 am (UTC)In some of these cases though I think it isn't so much that I don't hear the differences, but that I pronounce the words the same, but I hear the differences in other words. Much as I can hear the difference between "drawer" and "draw" no problem, but I was raised to pronounce both as "draw", so I tend to.
This would definitely be an easier conversation out loud though. But I do find such things interesting. I know I've been told that I am mispronouncing certain German words and then been corrected to something that sounded identical to me. I don't know what to do when that happens.
One of the fantasy books I read as a child had that happen with a creature from another dimension. The main character is told he is pronouncing the name or species (I forget) wrong and is corrected to something that sounds the same to him. I thought that was a cute touch.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-18 05:34 am (UTC)Oh yes, the joys of trying to listen to phonetic distinctions in another language that are not phonemic distinctions in your own.
I had a similar experience once when a Serbian girl tried to explain the difference between c-acute and c-caron to me; even when she said some example words a few times, they still sounded identical to me (both like English "ch").