It is amazing how angry people get

[conuly]

when all you say is "Listen, it's not true that you can't know how to pronounce an unfamiliar word by looking at it, there are rules that will work with a high degree of accuracy".

And every time, sooner or later somebody or other will condescend to tell me that if I'd only phrased it better, they would've listened to what I was saying. It's not the message, it's the way I said that that caused these people to think I was calling them stupid.

None of those people will ever give me the magically better words they think will remedy this problem, though I do ask every single time people suggest it to me, and honestly, I don't think there are any. I think the problem is that people don't want to hear the message at all. If you say "You ought to have been taught these rules in childhood" then they feel ashamed for not knowing something basic and obvious, and even if you don't say it but just mention that rules exist they feel stupid, and then either way they blame you for making them feel bad.

And since that's the case, I don't really see the need to trouble myself too much over my phrasing. Actually, bizarre as it is, I've found that trying harder to be bland and conciliatory is likely to make the situation worse.

But I may as well open it up to other people. Do you have the magic words?

(Note: I don't have any spelling or reading curriculum that are designed for self-study by adult learners who can already read and write pretty well but who struggle with spelling or sounding out unfamiliar words and claim to believe there is no method other than to guess or else memorize each word as an arbitrary collection of letters, which is most of the people I encounter in this situation because, of course, we're all posting online. However, if you're working with somebody to remediate spelling on a budget, I can recommend starting, if they have no signs of ADHD or dyslexia, with Spalding - making the modifications here - and/or Apples and Pears if they do, and then, if they still need help, moving on to Megawords. Those are highly scripted and, importantly - easy to buy on the cheap. I really don't love Spalding, I found it way too front-loaded for ADHD, plus Wanda Spalding had a lot of little personal peeves she built in if you don't use the modifications I suggested, but it's hands-down the cheapest Orton-Gillingham program you'll find for teaching reading and spelling together. Apples and Pears has an associated reading curriculum that probably also is good, but E only needed help in spelling, so I don't know.)

Comments

[kyrielle]

Honestly I'd say it almost the way you did, but with one change: "It's true that you can't know how to pronounce an unfamiliar word with 100% certainty by looking at it, but there are rules that will work with a high degree of accuracy."

Because English is weird, there's always one exception, and if you validate their assumption then they can at least tell themselves that maybe the ones they found hard in the past are that rare exception?

Probably they'll still get annoyed, tho.

[lilysea]

and then there's when you know how something should be said, but your mouth just doesn't work that way

there are a whole bunch of words I say wrong, not because I don't know the correct pronunciation

but because speech is tongue muscles and mouth muscles and they just don't wanna make certain sounds.

dachshund is one, there are several others.

[conuly]

Yeah, but that’s a different issue, and you’re unlikely to immediately fly into a rage over it.

[conuly]

I’ll try it next time it comes up and then report back if it was a success.

[lilysea]

Yeah, but that’s a different issue, and you’re unlikely to immediately fly into a rage over it

true to both

I get a bit annoyed if someone keeps correcting me after I've told them that my mouth can't ever say the word the right way

but annoyed, not angry

(I also get a bit annoyed when people correct me about a word that I usually say correctly, but that I have just said wrong because my mouth muscles/tongue muscles are having a tired/clumsy day, but again, not angry, just annoyed)

I do wish there was a neat and tidy way to say "I know how to say XYZ correctly, but my tongue muscles are not co-operating today"

[low_delta]

Good webpage, thanks.

I think the problem is that people don't understand the rules because there are so many. This guide illustrates how many rules you have to work your way down through to get to the part you need.

I'm pretty good at pronouncing American English words correctly. What always trips me up are names, because so many of them come directly from other languages. Like, the initial kn is always the n sound, but if it's a name, you (almost?) always pronounce the k. When I was young, and heard the name Knut, I thought it was spelled Canute. And don't get me started on Greek. I'm glad I never said Hermione out loud, because I thought it was her-mee-oan.

[sonia]

Cool web page! I wonder if people feel like you're denying their reality. That is certainly a quick way to piss me off. If I say, "I can't X," and someone says, "Yes, you can," a) they mean "Yes *I* can," and b) there might be reasons I can't even if they can, since we're different people.

So my suggestion is something like, "Yes, English is really frustrating. Some native speakers internalize a set of complex rules that get them 85% of the way there, but if you haven't had a chance to do that, it's really hard to know how to pronounce an unfamiliar word."

[the_siobhan]

My very broad experience is that people who legitimately can't do a thing will be very patient and gracious about explaining that they can't do the thing.[1] Whereas people who can do a thing but can't be arsed to learn how will get pissy at you about it.

[1] This rule goes away if you argue with them and so it should.

[smokingboot]

Correcting people is difficult, not least because shamed people get defensive and then suddenly no-one is learning a damn thing. I would probably change the statement to 'Yes, almost always you can learn how to pronounce an unfamiliar word by looking at it, there are rules that will work with a high degree of accuracy. Not in every single situation, but for most. Try them and let me know what you think!' Having said that, there's nothing you can do about people who just donwanna.

[gingicat]

To a native speaker, instead of saying "you should have learned this in school" you could say "this used to be taught in school." I can tell you that it was part of Michigan and California and NYC school curriculum in the 1970s and 1980s, but not in Massachusetts in the 2010s.

[conuly]

The trouble is that if you say that, three more people will pop up to assert that no it wasn’t, because ugh, they personally weren’t.

[conuly]

The thing is, and I’m dead serious, it is entirely possible to teach kids to sound out words to this degree of fluency within three months if you push, or a single school year if you’re working at a standard pace.

And not just one on one or with smart or motivated kids.

It looks like a lot, but it’s not that hard - and it’s faster than letting them think they need to memorize every word by sight first.

[siliconshaman]

There are rules? Says the dyslexic guy...

[watervole]

That's because 'dachshund' is a German word, and German has different sounds that English speakers aren't used to.

[conuly]

Yes, there are rules. And you should have been formally taught them as a child.

[lilysea]

I actually did German at high school for 3 years gettings As and Bs, and I don't remember struggling with the German mouth sounds back then?

but it's possible that I was just saying German wrong and my German teacher had 20 students in a class and couldn't correct everyone all the time.

Having said that, I think having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has definitely made my pronunciation worse, both in unfamiliar languages and in English - my tongue now sometimes accidentally gets twisted or tangled up or tripped up, especially when I am tired or fatigued or exhausted.

It's not a stress/anxiety thing, it is most likely to happen when I am feeling emotionally calm and relaxed but very physically tired and/or very mentally tired.

[lilysea]

As a tangent: for years as a child and a teenager, I struggled with saying "pronunciation" wrong.

In this case, it was not because I couldn't make the mouth sounds, but because my brain kept forgetting the correct pronunciation.

I also struggled for years with saying "proprioception", again not for muscle reasons but because my brain could never remember how to say it right.

[watervole]

Or that your German teacher didn't have the accent spot on. Even spending a year in another country isn't enough to get it totally.
My Ukrainian friends have been in the UK several years now, and their English accents vary a lot, from pretty good, to not very.

[siliconshaman]

Yeah, that tracks. There was a lot of stuff I should've been taught as child, and wasn't.

[lilysea]

I don't remember ever being taught English pronunciation rules as a child when learning to read/write in English in Australia. Mind you, I spent most of my primary school years at a fairly hippie/alternative primary school that had a ...relaxed... attitude to curriculum.

But even the 2 years I spent at a much less relaxed state primary school didn't formally teach English pronunciation rules.

I think in Australia, for people born in the 1970s, it was a "pick up how to say things by osmosis" [excluding Deaf students and students who did speech therapy]

and I know dozens of people of my generation who reached university saying some English words wrong because they learned them from books and never heard them spoken out loud.

(I *was* taught French pronunciation rules when doing high school French; and German pronunciation rules when doing high school German)

But, yeah, the first time I ever heard about formal pronunciation rules for English was when I went to a medieval history conference at university [an optional extra for students, graduates, and the general public] and they were talking about thorns and yods and why ghost is spelled like that and weird remnant/residual spellings in English words.

(Thorn is really cool, no longer used these days in modern English

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)

[pauamma]

Do you have the magic words? I don't, but I'm not sure they exist.

[conuly]

It’s a German word in German.

In English it’s an English word, and we automatically pronounce English words with English phonemes.

[conuly]

I absolutely believe you.

[conuly]

LOL. Why are NTs.

But seriously, if this post had involved somebody saying that they'd never heard of the concept of "swimming" and asserting that it's not possible to cross water without being in a boat - and apparently seriously! - they would've gotten so much shit, people actually calling them stupid, and all the people insulting them would've gotten upvoted.

And I'm bending over backwards to indict poor curriculum choices rather than people, because I don't think it's fair to blame people for not knowing things they don't know and it's certainly not helpful, and I'm getting all the anger dumped on me.

[lilysea]

A tangent, but a recent language peeve I had:

Facebook recently showed me a video from an Indian English As A Second Language teacher saying that native English speakers never said "toilet", and that if you said "toilet" you would automatically be flagged as an ESL speaker. She claimed that instead of "toilet" you should use bathroom; washroom; a few other words I forget.

That may be true in the US, but it is ABSOLUTELY not true in Australia.

In Australia we say toilet; toilets; public toilets; or loo/loos.

In Australia "bathroom" is not synonymous with/a euphemism for "toilet" - a bathroom is a room which contains either a shower and/or a bath.

It may have a toilet, or it may not have a toilet - it is quite common for the toilet in a private house to be a small cubicle sized room set off of a hallway, quite separate from the bathroom, so that the toilet can still be used while someone is having a bath/shower. In more modern houses, the small toilet room set off the hallway may have a small handbasin for handwashing - in older houses, the assumption is that if the bathroom is occupied, you wash your hands using the taps for the laundry sink or the kitchen sink.

(and of course in houses built before 1950, the toilet may be a free-standing small roofed brick cubicle in the backyard, or maybe part of an outdoor roofed laundry.)

[conuly]

Just replied to your post.

[conuly]

For me it's "exacerbate", which I can only say if I say it very, very carefully.

My mother told me once that she had trouble with "abominable" until she learned to say "a bomb in a bull" instead - the mental image got past her weird tongue block.

[adrian_turtle]

It’s important to put the blame squarely on the school for not teaching it, rather than on the reader for not learning it in that school. I’d go with, “a lot of schools don’t teach this, and they’re letting their students down.” Education schools seem to think of it as an elective for teachers who are going to specialize in teaching ESL or 6 year olds with dyslexia. And really, almost everyone can use these skills.

We could have said of 20 or 40 years ago, “a lot of schools didn’t teach this.” The exact value of “a lot” is changing but not relevant to this discussion. The response to: “My elementary school taught these useful rules!” is “You got lucky—Go back and thank your teacher.”

[conuly]

Tried it before, didn't work - I got a lot of angry posturing about how this person did really well on their GSCEs in the 1980s* and how the cited 18% of English adults who are, at best, functionally illiterate can only blame themselves for having problems with school.

That's a fairly typical response to "The schools should teach this, and while most students who don't have systematic phonics instruction are okay**, some students aren't so lucky".

* I didn't respond by saying it's a little embarrassing to brag about your high school grades 40+ years after you became an adult, not that they appreciated my restraint.

** For a limited definition of "okay" that allows them to keep believing that there's no way to sound out unfamiliar words in English.

[movingfinger]

We spent time on that as we learned to read, because a lot of reading classes involved reading aloud. Nobody had hysterics about how difficult it was. None of the children said "kuhniggut" for knight after being taught that way.

[redsixwing]

Ooh, that's a GOOD list.

But about people getting mad when you tell them there's a system: Heck if I know, when doing it online/anonymous/pseudonymous.

I do a lot of this on a professional level, and I spend SO much time building trust with people, making chitchat, and doing all the other small tasks that incline people to read me as "a helpful nerd who's on their side" rather than "an impediment who's blowing up their nice(1) smooth(2) process. That stuff is WORK, though, and it's obviously not going to help when dealing with anonymous internet situations.

1. lol
2. lmao, even

[conuly]

They don’t have a process! Their process is explicitly “lol nope”!

Which, okay, but when someone asks “how do I do it” it’s not wrong of me to say “this is how”.