Phonics

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

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.

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. ?

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

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!

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 !

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

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!!! ?

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.

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.

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

Should add I am FAR from posh

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

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

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.

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.

...couldn’t put....

I was surprised when we moved from darn sarf to the midlands as a child, and people pronounced ‘one’ as ‘wan’ (as in pale and pasty looking). ( I couldn’t the past tense of ‘win’ there, since it’s pronounced ‘wun’ - what a minefield!)

I used to teach English as a foreign language - TBH I’m surprised more of them (mostly speakers of Arabic) didn’t tie themselves in tortured knots over our spelling.
Though I did once have an elementary student write ‘nacad’ - (knackered!) When I asked where he’d learned that word, he said he worked with ‘many English soldier’!

Gagajo I remember people being told to modify their accents when they were sent out on teaching practice, the fact that the children probably understood them better than the rest of us didn't seem to count. Mind you in later years the deputy head announcing to the school "You'se 'll all have to.... " used to grate a bit.

ixion

There you go!

I've lived in 'the North' for nearly 50 years and people telling me that still really annoys me!

GrannyGravy13

I am currently helping to homeschool our yr1 GC whilst DD goes into the office.

We actually did this in phonics this week, the teacher added the r in the explanation of the words ba(r)th pa(r)th to distinguish from other a sounds.

Whilst emphasising that the correct spelling of the word does not include the letter r

Sorry for my muddled explanation, hopefully it makes sense.

That was a really stupid thing for the teacher to do. If your GC pronounce the 'a' in bath, etc. as /ar/ then they would take it for granted that that 'a' spells an /ar/ sound. Absolutely no need to confuse them with made up spellings.

The letter 'a' can represent at least three sounds, /a/ as in 'pat', /ar/ as in 'father' (depending on accent) and /ay' as in 'favour'. (Up here it could represent a sound halfway between /ay/ and /e/ (led) as some NEasterners have a distinctive way of pronouncing 'father'.) That's what children should be taught and what they actually find perfectly easy to learn.

Problem is that a lot of teachers don't really understand phonics, either.

Yes, we know our a's from our arse r's in the North ?

There you go!

I remember once in an assembly at my northern primary school, the headmistress stopped the hymn we were all singing (All things bright and beautiful?) and told us we were not to sing ‘flow-ers’, we should sing ‘flaars’ ?!

LOL trisher. A Geordie teacher friend of mine was once actually marked down in a teaching observation for pronouncing film 'fillum'. A shocking thing to do by an arrogant tw*t. How can you police someone's accent? Ludicrous.