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PR 1 help please.


bluemongoose
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I have a question about 2 of the spelling markings and pronunciations in PR 1.

 

Thank- Mrs Beers says it says the a sound with a short a. I hear A in the middle not a. DD does as well. It is making this word hard to learn. Any help with this?

 

I also just watched my week 19 DVD. The word blue. She said it is saying blUe. Ok fine...but then she does the markings with a line over the U and one under and crosses out the e with a 2. In all other words that have two reasons for a silent e, she usually says you mark the silent e for the first reason, which would be the u saying its name, right? So you would mark it with #1, but this time, she said to mark the 2, which would be the second reason in this word...um...why?

 

Help!

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What vowel sound you hear in many words, including 'thank' is going to vary with your own regional dialect and accent. I definitely hear /a/, not /A/. Are you from the south, by any chance? I'm just curious, because I can definitely imagine how that might come out sounding like a long /A/ sound when one has a southern accent. (I'm a transplanted midwesterner living in the south and married to a southerner. :D) I personally would not teach that it's a long /A/ because that's really not what it is supposed to be - look in the dictionary. You might pronounce it a certain way, and there's nothing wrong with the way you pronounce the word (an accent can't really be "wrong"), but it's not supposed to be a long /A/ sound, based on the rules of spelling, and the dictionary will not tell you it's a long /A/ sound. It's up to you what you want to do, though. You're the teacher, so if you want it to be a long /A/, then it is. I would just take this as an opportunity to explain dialects and accents to your daughter, which is an important thing to understand anyway. :)

 

The reason the silent e in 'blue' is marked as a 2 is because u can say /U/ at the end of a syllable without a silent e. The e isn't necessary for the u to make it's long sound. It's only necessary to prevent the word from ending in u.

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I didn't have trouble with "thank" but we have run across a few words that we definitely pronounce differently than Mrs. Beers. I always allow my kids to mark it the way we say it. It's just too confusing for us anyother way so if I heard the long a when I say "thank" I would mark it that way. It doesn't change the spelling, and it doesn't cause undue confusion. The major point of the marking is to understand how to spell the word so you are going to accomplish that purpose whether you mark it long or not.

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Ha Ha, not from the south! We are in the PNW.

 

I do hear thank with the /A/...just like drank, sank etc. It sounds like Ank to me! Maybe I am loony! I will teach it the way it is supposed to be, but I do have a hard time making it say thaaank:D

 

As for blue...thAnks for explaining that! It makes sense and is something I can tell her when she asks.

 

JanOH-I would bend the rules a bit if DD could handle it, but she is very literal about things. Once we did the word "been" she started pronouncing it bEEn. We (in our area) almost pronounce been like bin.

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Interesting that that's how you hear it, because I think we probably sound almost the same (I'm from St. Louis - the typical newscaster's sort of accent, lol) and I don't hear it that way. I'd chalk it up to things sounding differently to people. I say 'been' the same way you do. :D When we get to words where the spelling clearly reflects a certain pronunciation, and we don't pronounce it that way, I just explain that "This is how they used to say it a long time ago, and we spell words based on how they used to sound back then, but we don't say it that way anymore." That helps for words like 'door' and 'four', too, where I definitely hear /d/or/ and /f/or/ not /d/O/r/ or /f/O/r. lol DD thinks it's funny and she usually remembers. When she spells four she says "Ffff ohhhh rrrr," followed by a lot of giggling. lol

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