Posted on 02/10/2015 6:30:03 AM PST by C19fan
Johnny in Topeka can’t read, but Janne in Helsinki is effortlessly finishing his storybooks. Such a disparity may be expected by now, but the reason might come as a surprise: It probably has much less to do with teaching style and quality than with language. Simply put, written English is great for puns but terrible for learning to read or write. It’s like making children from around the world complete an obstacle course to fully participate in society but requiring the English-speaking participants to wear blindfolds.
Adults who have already mastered written English tend to forget about its many quirks. But consider this: English has 205 ways to spell 44 sounds. And not only can the same sounds be represented in different ways, but the same letter or letter combinations can also correspond to different sounds. For example, "cat," "kangaroo," "chrome," and "queue" all start with the same sound, and "eight" and "ate" sound identical. Meanwhile, "it" doesn’t sound like the first syllable of "item," for instance, and "cough" doesn’t rhyme with either "enough," "through," "furlough" or "bough." Even some identically spelled words, such as "tear," can be pronounced differently and mean different things.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
One of the wonders of English is that it is one of the most difficult of the Western languages therefore it exercises and expands the brain abilities with learning and use.
I assure you that Asian languages are even more difficult and certainly expand their users brain use and capacity.
Remember when people used to say “Nothing worth doing is easy”?
Now? Buncha whiners. ITS TOO HAAAAAAARRRRD.....
Gimme a break.
That’s why we were taught “context clues” in school in order to find which was the correct word to use if they sounded the same.
U R RNG
/s
Another example of defining deviancy down.
Using this nimrod’s logic the Chinese should all be drooling morons considering haw many thousands of complicated pictographs they have to learn.
This author is part of the bunch of progressives that killed phonetics and make HS seniors incapable of reading at a 5th grade level.
Crap something up and then double down. Liberalism defined in seven words.
Chinese is really hard.
Ooooooo, spelling is sooooo hard.
So typically liberal.
Let’s see the idiot come up with schemes to make calculus easy.
Calculus....that’s the discipline that would totally explode both of Dormbama’s operational brain cells.
We’re teaching our kids, at a very young age, the “secret code of ancient Americans” - cursive.
And French words end with the sound ‘ewww’, ‘ou’ or something similar, regardless the spelling.
This is a ridiculous idea. For one thing, we cannot even agree on how to pronounce many words in this country. Throw England, Canada and Australia in, and you have a mess.
Standardize words like been, spigot, coyote etc. for starters. There are many, many more. England is a language with millions of words. “Standardizing” would make Shakespeare a foreign language, Faulkner would remain unreadable, and the OED would have to go in the dustheap, as too many words would have to be addressed.
Save these novelties for tiny Scandinavian tongues. Those of us who defend standard English already have our hands full with defending “awesome”, “impact” and “gender” from abuse, despite the fact that we are currently losing on all three fronts.
English is the current international language for a reason. It joyfully adds new words as needed, and those who only need business English can get by on a couple of thousand words.
If reading and writing English is such an obstacle to learning, why didn’t anyone notice it before?
What idiocy. Phonics is simple and foolproof.
Spelling is hard when you never teach the kids spelling.
We know what works - phonics.
And our educational establishment is bound and determined not to teach it.
“Context clues”? Sounds like “whole language”—the antithesis of simple phonics teaching—to me.
Do you know what the left’s opposition to phonics is?
That conservative parents use it to teach their kids to read hard words so that they can read the Bible.
This is just another page from Satan’s playbook. He hates anything that smacks of rules, order, cleanliness, etc. He loves chaos. Anyone can “make up” their own language but the functioning of any society, nation or group depends on recognizable rules and standards that are followed by all. Even our Justice System is collapsing upon itself because there are no clear and consistent rules that apply to all.
You can look at just about any facet of life in these last days and see Satan’s efforts at creating chaos. He has plenty of willing accomplices to help him achieve his ends. May Our Lord come quickly.
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