Phonics

Alexa
* This is a snobbish world, and it is still the case that school leavers with posher accents get better jobs*

I don’t have a posh accent and I was among the top 5% of higher earners in my field before I retired.

I still drink wardah Csllistemon especially after a vegemite sandwich. So go bite yer bum pommie ?

As soon as you said I really don't want my DC speaking like that! and then later 'rarft' and 'plarnt' just sound plain 'darft'! and then in a later post if they go round saying darft and rarft they will sound like members of the royal family circa 1950! Nobody speaks like that really you really are showing your personal (rather strong) feelings and are quite out of touch with anywhere outside your area I have no accent but would certainly say darft barth and parth and no I m not related to the Royal family either now or in the fifties

Of course worksheets can’t be written in regional terms they have to follow basic non regional rules and regulations

I am afraid you ll have to accept your grandchildren will have the accents of their area and their school friends I still find it very strange talking to my son with his very strong NZ accent but that’s how it is

Should add I am FAR from posh

The problem is of course English is not a phonetic language. There have been many ideas to correct or help with this, when I first started teaching some schools were using The Initial Teaching Alphabet-commonly known as "ita". It really screwed up your spelling! I knew George Bernard Shaw had been interested in this so I Googled it. If you've nothing else to do there is a complicated and detailed account of the result en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet

it's buses and butter not bases and batter

I have never heard anyone pronounce bus and butter as bas and batter . I have only ever heard bus pronounced with a short 'u' (in the south) or with a long 'u', to rhyme with could (in the north).

But bas? Batter? How odd. Where have you heard this trisher? Genuine question, I am interested.

Phonics is used in the teaching of spelling, not pronunciation and this is taken from the Spelling Appendix of the National Curriculum of English.

Some words are exceptions in some accents but not in others – e.g. -past, last, fast, path and bath- are not exceptions in accents where the a in these words is pronounced /æ/, as in cat.

I used this explanation on my own worksheets.

‘a’ as /ar/ or /a/ (dialect)

and the spellings included

last, past, class, bath and path.

We had discussions about accent and dialect and how regions were different not right or wrong.

You do realise, don't you GrandmaK, that your DGC will have a BARTH as apposed to a BAFF like what we do up Norf!!! ?

Bath doesn't have an "r" in it does it ? No wonder kids can't spell

By the sound of some language kids would spell " bath " as baff, so teaching sounds would be more to the point. " TH " doesn't spell f !

Surely using a long a sound and inserting an r in a word are two entirely different things. I can imagine Her Majesty asking for her baath to be drawn but *barth” no way!

Bathsheba

^it's buses and butter not bases and batter^

I have never heard anyone pronounce bus and butter as bas and batter . I have only ever heard bus pronounced with a short 'u' (in the south) or with a long 'u', to rhyme with could (in the north).

But bas? Batter? How odd. Where have you heard this trisher? Genuine question, I am interested.

It's a way of distinguishing the "u" sound from the one used by southerners which isn't an "u" but something akin to an "a'. I suppose I could have said booses and booter for the way we say it in Yorkshire, but hey I\m a Yorkshire lass, so of course we say it properly and it's the southerners who have it wrong. And it really does sound like an "a" But if you want to know more or if you want to speak Yorkshire this is good.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB-7HCwmHTk

Bathsheba

^it's buses and butter not bases and batter^

I have never heard anyone pronounce bus and butter as bas and batter . I have only ever heard bus pronounced with a short 'u' (in the south) or with a long 'u', to rhyme with could (in the north).

But bas? Batter? How odd. Where have you heard this trisher? Genuine question, I am interested.

I've heard these pronunciations too, from my SiL.

She is northern, but had a very middle-class upbringing (boarding school), and is actually quite snobbish, unlike many other people I know who had a similar education

Although I am pretty sure that she would have originally used the typically-northern pronunciations, like her brother - my OH - I think she changed how she spoke so as not to appear 'common'.

The trouble is, she has overdone it, and it is the use of 'a' in place of 'u' where it is very noticable. It always makes common old me laugh inwardly when, for instance, she talks about ordering a 'carry' instead of a curry. ?

As a forces child sent to boarding school at the age of 10 I was made to have private elocution lessons. We had lived all over the U.K. and I had managed to pick up the local accent of wherever we were living. After 16 primary schools I had worked out that this was the only way to fit in. My accents ranged from Northumbrian fishing village to countryside Suffolk.
I was told that I would never find and marry a “nice” man with a yokel accent. So I learned how to speak posh, never failed an interview and married an Oxford graduate teacher.

Bus is pronounced buzz, or was until I had school elocution lessons.

Bathsheba

^it's buses and butter not bases and batter^

I have never heard anyone pronounce bus and butter as bas and batter . I have only ever heard bus pronounced with a short 'u' (in the south) or with a long 'u', to rhyme with could (in the north).

But bas? Batter? How odd. Where have you heard this trisher? Genuine question, I am interested.

When I first moved to Sheffield, from Essex, some 50 years ago I was trying to buy half a pound of butter in a grocer's shop. The assistant was utterly baffled and swore that they didn't sell it, that no-one would sell it. It was only when I said that I wanted the stuff made from milk to spread on bread that she said with great relief "Oh, you mean booter ('oo' as in hook). She thought I meant the stuff you make yorkshire pudding with, 'batter'.

This is absolutely true, and I still sometimes get my 'bus' and 'butter' commented on, even after all this time oop North

So, yes 'bas' and 'batter' are a 'thing'.

GrannyGravy13

MaizieD I have just spoken to friend of DD’s they teach yr1, graduated 6 years ago
from a Southern University and that was how they were taught to teach phonics.

I know. Sad, isn't it, that many Unis still don't have a clue about how to teach phonics because many of the established lecturers don't approve of it? Believe me, I was involved in 'the reading wars' for many years.

I know most of the developers of the leading UK phonics programmes (it's a small world) and have had training from four of them. I really do know what I'm talking about.

GrandmaKT

Witzend

Isn’t it more a case of dahft and rahft etc.? No actual ‘r’ sound in the middle of the word.

Yes Witzend, or I would say a long 'a' sound - Daaft, raaft, but if they go round saying darft and rarft they will sound like members of the royal family circa 1950! Nobody speaks like that really.

Darft and rarft aren't posh, they're just Southern. I can assure you my accent is nowhere near posh! Although it IS a bit clearer now I'm back overseas again. Non British children can't understand me if I chunter on in my Norfolk accent.

MaizieD if the lecturers do not teach phonics correctly what hope is there for our early years children?

GrannyGravy13 fortunately phonics is just one way of teaching reading, the process of which is an incredibly complicated brain function. It is a way upon which some advisers in education became hooked. Much as when I started teaching some people were hooked on the Initial Teaching Alphabet (fortunes were spent on books and equipment for that). It's something that gives children a start in the first steps of reading and it provides a good base for a teaching programme. It has its limitations, but early years are usually OK. It's the later ones where kids start to try and sound out words like cough and through not to mention thorough and brought that you get problems.

trisher it always amazed/pleased me when the whole reading writing process actually sunk in with our children. It was as if a weight had been lifted from our shoulders, as we knew it would now be onwards and upwards.

Aaaargh! How awful! That reminds me of when I was 11, having just moved from Wirral to Hertfordshire where it was considered scintillating to get me to say "potato puffs", hit me, and then fall about laughing. That brutal form of elocution lesson only reinforced my determination to keep my Woollyback vowels which are, after all, much closer to those that Chaucer Shakespeare would have recognised.

I did all right in life.

Oh, and we Woollybacks (and thereabouts) have never said "Oop North". We say "Up North". It's the bloody southerners who say "Ap North".

Bathsheba

^Nobody speaks like that really^
Well of course people do, don’t be so daaft. I live in the south and nobody pronounces daft, path, raft, etc with a short ‘a’ as in cat, it is always, always with the long ‘a’ sound, as in park or barn. And yes, I do say Doncaaster, sorry dragonfly .
And I say Glaasgow as well!

Surely, GrandmaKT, you are aware of regional dialects? How can you honestly believe that ‘nobody speaks like that really’?

Bathsheba, as Mr Hardy says you live between Weymouth and Dorchester then you might well say 'Glaasgow' and 'Doncaaster', like a sheep or Robert Newton in the Disney Treasure Island. Although I think Doncaster would come out more like Doncaaaasrrr.

I’m very happy the way my Geordie granddaughters speak. I’m a southerner and they quite often tease about the way I speak. I just tell them that people talk differently depending on where they come from and both is fine. I want them to love their heritage just as I do.

As long as they learn to read and write and later spell, I’m a happy bunny. We should be celebrating our wonderful language in all its forms, wherever we come from and of course our diversity for such a small country.