sumetary

Tue Mar 31 06:54:10 UTC 2009

Thanks, Herb, for that interesting clip in which Bill ~Lubbaaf talks about the Great Lake Northern Cities Vowel Shift (for short vowels).  (I didn't see his last name spelled but I can spell it phonetically in truespel).  He says that around the great lakes cities certain vowels are changing.  This area contains cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffaloe (about 34M people).  It used to be the USA English standard pronunciation for media.  Some examples are:

saying "block" the same as "black"
saying "buses" the same as "bosses"

Other short vowels are swapping too.  ~Lubbaaf says we are growing apart linguistically even with massive media exposure.  To me this is a bad thing.  It should be changed and can be changed.

I speculate that the main reason for this is that many schools have dropped phonetic or phonic instruction for teaching reading and gone with "whole language" or "whole word" approach.  This forbids teaching the alphabetic principle that letters stand for sounds, so kids are taught that they have to learn words visually, and thus pronunciation is not linked to spelling and can vary capriciously.   Huge mistake.

By not teaching the letter-sound relationship, teachers are actually saying it does not exist.  But of course it does, and this is a fundamental lie, bordering on malpractice.  Teachers were fired for teaching the letter-sound correspondence, even though it's real.  Granted the correspondence is not 100%, but if you look at the number 1 most popular way each sound is spelled in USA English, the consonants are 90% consistent and vowels are 50% consistent (according to my data in truespel book 4.)

Data from Keith Stanovic shows that "phonemic awareness" correlates with good reading skills for new English learners.  This fact is recognized by the the USA Reading Panel Study group in their 2000 report.  Schools are now dropping the "whole word" approach and going back to phonics.  Truespel can promote a phonetics first approach like IBM's "Writing to Read", where only 40 sound-spellings need be learned to read anything if written in truespel.  So kids can see a true letter sound correspondence as it is always has been intended using roman letters.  After that comes phonic patterns and then sight words.

One handy thing for phonetic application is automatic replacement by computer word processors of an entered phonetic word with its tradspel equivalent.  A computer program can be written to recognize that a word beginning with ~ is phonetic and display tradspel choices.  I have the database for such a program.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com

> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:41:43 -0400
> From: hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: sumetary
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Herb Stahlke
> Subject: Re: sumetary
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A sound shift is by definition a general phenomenon affecting all
> words containing that sound. There's a YouTube clip you can watch on
> the NCVS at
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UoJ1-ZGb1w&NR=1
> that both describes and gives spoken examples of it.
>
> Herb
>
> On 3/30/09, Tom Zurinskas  wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>> Subject: Re: sumetary
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Is it a genealr vowel shift that applies to more than one word such that
>> short u replaces short e often? I haven't heard that vowel shift but for
>> this one word, "cemetery" as ~sumutairee
>>
>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>> see truespel.com
>>
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------
>>> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:32:50 -0400
>>> From: hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
>>> Subject: Re: sumetary
>>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Herb Stahlke
>>> Subject: Re: sumetary
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Tom,
>>>
>>> That's probably a Northern Cities Vowel Shift speaker. Among the
>>> vowel shifts involved in that complex pattern of shifts is the vowel
>>> of "bed" shifting back to the vowel of "bud." You'll hear that pretty
>>> commonly in the cities along the Great Lakes, from Syracuse and
>>> Rochester over to Milwaukee.
>>>
>>> Herb
>>>
>>> On 3/30/09, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>> -----------------------
>>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>>>> Subject: sumetary
>>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> From the Bob and Tom show today I heard cemetary pronounced SUMetary by
>>>> all.
>>>> Strangely common. From two talking dictionaries it's spoken ~semutairee,
>>>> as I would suppose.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>>> see truespel.com
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