sumetary

[Matthew Gordon]

I wanted to add a couple of points to what others have responded:

1. The man's name is Labov, and he pronounces it /l at bov/ (i.e. to rhyme with
'stove').

2. As Herb noted, the Northern Cities Shift (NCS) has been around for much
longer than the kinds of "whole language" approaches Tom seeks to pin the
blame on. I'm not sure I'd date it back 100 yrs. but it's at least 5 or 6
decades old.

3. Phonological features like the NCS are part of a child's grammar before
they begin to learn to read. At best, then, a reading program might be used
(futilely, no doubt) to "correct" the shift.

4. Because the NCS involves sub-phonemic shifts in vowel quality, I don't
see how increased emphasis on the "alphabetic principle" would be of any
value. Whether or not a child has the NCS, mastering the alphabetic
principle involves associating some letter with some *phoneme* not with some
allophone. Both the child learning to read in New York City and the one
learning to read in Chicago may come to associate the letter <o> (e.g. cot,
lot) with the phoneme /A/, but the Chicagoan will more often realize that
phoneme with a central or fronter allophone (per the NCS). I suppose you
could coach someone to use a different allophone, but that's got nothing to
do with teaching them to read - that's accent reduction therapy.

On 3/31/09 1:54 AM, "Tom Zurinskas" <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

> 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
>
>

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