Time for spelling to be updated.

Well, yes, that's all we can do really....

Last week I was at a phonics meeting for 5yr old DGD as DD could not get away from work and they went through the phonics and how to help the children, but then threw a hammer into the works and said of course when they are reading the phoncis dont help but DGD seems to have taken it all in her stride and is gallopping through it all.

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So many old threads popping up recently.Is it boredom ?

English is not the only language to have pitfalls in spelling.

Danish and German have just as many.

Asking children to spell words I always use them in a sentence, which should sort out the threw through business.

As a child I had a spelling book that grouped words according to the problem: rough, cough, thought, though, tough etc.

I have used this system with my pupils and they too thought it made spelling easier.

Yes, but it’s fun!

We all know what this spells don’t we?

Ghoti

???

Interestingly, Welsh has few pitfalls. It is nearly always pronounced the way it is spelt.

I assume many if you already know:

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead –
For goodness sake don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
– Just look them up –
and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language?
Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five!