AAS ? Phonogram a

[Scuff]

Why isn't u listed as a sound for A? Like about or aboveThese vowel sounds seem to be quite thorough. DS wants to add it in. I agree. Is there a reason it's not listed or...

[Honey Bee]

AAS is very thorough with their phonograms, here's my explanation:

 

about has two syllables a-bout (the a actually has the sound of long a)

 

same with above, a-bove and long a sound.

 

The rule here is that a, e, o, and u usually say their names at the end of a syllable, for this case, a is actually a one-word syllable and says its name. I think it might be more of a dialect thing than anything else. :001_smile:

[siloam]

Why isn't u listed as a sound for A? Like about or aboveThese vowel sounds seem to be quite thorough. DS wants to add it in. I agree. Is there a reason it's not listed or...

 

My guess would be that when a says /u/ it is a schwa. Basically there are times when any of the vowels will say /u/ as a schwa.

 

From ABC's and All Their Tricks by Margaret M. Bishop

 

p. 68-69

Like the sounds of most English vowels, the sounds of A are muffled beyond recognition in the syllables which are the most hurried, and are therefore the least stressed.

 

Schwa (upside down e) is usually used by dictionaries to respell the vowel sounds of these unstressed syllables.

 

Heather

[Momling]

AAS is very thorough with their phonograms, here's my explanation:

 

about has two syllables a-bout (the a actually has the sound of long a)

 

same with above, a-bove and long a sound.

 

The rule here is that a, e, o, and u usually say their names at the end of a syllable, for this case, a is actually a one-word syllable and says its name. I think it might be more of a dialect thing than anything else. :001_smile:

 

In "about" and "above" you say the 'a' as 'ay' (/ei/)?

 

In a standard American English pronunciation, I'm pretty sure it's just a schwa -- which makes sense because the stress is on the second syllable. Unstressed syllables change to a schwa.

[MerryAtHope]

The A in about is a schwa sound. Any vowel can take on a schwa sound when it's in an unaccented syllable, and usually the sound is a short U. But adding a short U sound to every vowel would be confusing to kids. It's also not totally accurate--we say the /uh/ sound because our mouths are lazy and don't want to pronounce the actual sound. Many times we can learn how to spell a word with a schwa by slowing down how we say the word and pronouncing for spelling. For example, in the word "cabin," which often sounds like "cab-un" when we say it fast--if we slow down and say "cab-IN" we can hear the short I.

 

Schwas are first taught in Level 2, step 4. Words like "about" are taught as a group in Level 4. The instructions there say: Sometimes when the letter a comes at the beginning of a multisyllable word it doesn't say its sound clearly. It sounds like /uh/. [They actually have the u with the short symbol over it, I just don't know how to type that, LOL!]

 

Then there's a note in the margin about schwas and strategies to use.

 

HTH! I'd tell your son that he's bright for picking up on that pattern for the letter A in words like about, he made a great observation! If he's one who likes terms, you can teach him the word schwa. Otherwise you can tell him that our mouths get lazy in syllables that we say quickly or in syllables that we don't emphasize, and we don't say the proper sound.

 

Merry :-)

[Ellie]

It isn't listed because it isn't a true sound of "a."

[snipsnsnailsx5]

We came across another question we had on one of the letter sounds also.

 

I asked my oldest boy what sound "X" makes and he said "z and ks". However, only ks is listed as the sound for "X". So what about xylophone? That was what my son asked me, and I didn't know how to answer. Why didn't AAS include that sound for x?

[siloam]

We came across another question we had on one of the letter sounds also.

 

I asked my oldest boy what sound "X" makes and he said "z and ks". However, only ks is listed as the sound for "X". So what about xylophone? That was what my son asked me, and I didn't know how to answer. Why didn't AAS include that sound for x?

 

My guess is that because it is a Greek root, xylo for wood, it has retained the Greek pronunciation. Though that is just a guess.

 

Heather

[Scuff]

Yeah, X too :)

[Tonya P]

By far the most common sound of X is /ks/ as in "box." There are VERY few words where it says /z/.

 

Every letter of the alphabet has "rare" sounds. I saw a chart once showing that the letter A can say 16 different sounds. If we taught all of those sounds, it would be overwhelming!