Phonics question - "aging"

[Jentrovert]

I'm learning along with my kids. 🙂 I did google, but didn't find anything . . . in the word "aging", why is the vowel in the first syllable long? It's a closed syllable, right? If so, the vowel should be short, right? My first thought was that I was dividing the syllables incorrectly, and it should be a*ging, which didn't make sense to me, but would explain it. But I checked that, and ag*ing is the correct division. Is it because "aging" is the Americanized spelling, and it was first "ageing", so the spelling changed but not the pronunciation? Or what rule don't I know yet? (Or, what totally simple thing am I overlooking? 🙂 )

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Jentrovert

[maize]

Aging

Raging

Paging

Caging

Basting

Facing

Racing

Lacing

Etc.; The root words are all long vowel silent e words, I would say that the e, while dropped in spelling for simplicity's sake, is really kind of melded into the i. The root not changed.

Edited February 19, 2020 by maize

[PeterPan]

54 minutes ago, Jentrovert said:

But I checked that, and ag*ing is the correct division.

You'll need to differentiate syllabication for spelling (what you're giving) and how people actually pronounce it. Indeed, if you just googlefu, you'll see people are in fact breaking it A-jing. But we're going to "think to spell" it Age-ing because that's going to get us the spelling. And yes, it's probably in the weeds because of the history junk. But no, spelling and speech syllable breaks don't necessarily match. Ugly. Languages evolve, so it makes sense that this happens.

[Ellie]

9 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Now I’m curious: how well do these sorts of phonetic rules work in general? Are closed syllables supposed to have short vowels and open ones long ones? How do you decide where the syllable breaks are? Are there lots of exceptions, like, for example, is divide an exception?

I always feel like for longer words, I’m pretty much guessing how to say them, and no phonetic rules help that much! (And when I hear them spoken, I’m often surprised...)

I do love the long vowel-silent e rule. That one works very often...

These are spelling rules, not phonics rules. 🙂

"Divide" is not an exception to anything.

Spalding provides lots of explanations, as it teaches children to read by teaching them to spell.

There are five reasons for final silent e:

1. To help a single vowel say its first (or "long") sound: time, kite, rope

2. Because English words don't end with "v" or "u"; we use final silent e: have, blue ("blue" would sound the same even if the "e" wasn't there)

3.  Allows "c" and "g" to say their second sounds: chance, charge

4. Every syllable must have a vowel; we use "e" (syllables such as ble, cle, ple)

5. There's no reason. 🙂 Once upon a time we might have pronounced those e's, but we don't any longer: house, come, are

Spalding doesn't really talk about open and closed syllables. 

[Jentrovert]

55 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

I *think* the answer is

the root word is age.  The silent e is what makes the a long.  But when you add the suffix -ing, you have to drop the e.....but the root stays the same.

 

Like in the word hoping.  The root is hope.  But when you add the -ing suffix, you drop the e....but the root is still hope.  If the o was short, the word would be hopping....with the syllable division between the two Ps.  

 

51 minutes ago, maize said:

Aging

Raging

Paging

Caging

Basting

Facing

Racing

Lacing

Etc.; The root words are all long vowel silent e words, I would say that the e, while dropped in spelling for simplicity's sake, is really kind of melded into the i. The root not changed.

 

Ok, this makes sense about the root words. Thank you.

 

21 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Now I’m curious: how well do these sorts of phonetic rules work in general? Are closed syllables supposed to have short vowels and open ones long ones? How do you decide where the syllable breaks are? Are there lots of exceptions, like, for example, is divide an exception?

I always feel like for longer words, I’m pretty much guessing how to say them, and no phonetic rules help that much! (And when I hear them spoken, I’m often surprised...)

I do love the long vowel-silent e rule. That one works very often...

 

I'll let someone else answer these questions. lol I was a natural reader and never learned many rules. My kids are both dyslexic and I'm using Barton with them (started with Logic of English before the dx) so I'm basically learning the rules alongside them. 

[Paige]

It's been a long, long, long time since we did AAS, but I thought aging would be divided a-ging because I thought if you have vcv then the consonant (usually) goes with the second vowel unless there's a reason not to. Do I have it backwards? 

I find syllable division to be helpful in teaching spelling and reading to my younger kids. It doesn't work for every word because our language has so many imported words and things evolve, but it works much better than shooting in the dark. 

[maize]

9 hours ago, square_25 said:

Now I’m curious: how well do these sorts of phonetic rules work in general? Are closed syllables supposed to have short vowels and open ones long ones? How do you decide where the syllable breaks are? Are there lots of exceptions, like, for example, is divide an exception?

I always feel like for longer words, I’m pretty much guessing how to say them, and no phonetic rules help that much! (And when I hear them spoken, I’m often surprised...)

I do love the long vowel-silent e rule. That one works very often...

 

Part of the challenge is the way English has adopted and adapted so many words from other languages--our most core vocabulary and structure come from Germanic Old English but a majority of the words in an English dictionary originate elsewhere.

We adopt a word, adapt the pronunciation, but often apply spelling that still remembers where the word originated. Divide comes from French, the first syllable was what we like to call a "long e" sound but is a sound represented by "i" in most European languages. But in English we make the first syllable of divide unstressed and that vowel sound turns into a "short i" sound.

Similar adaptations were made to words like vision, river, accident, finish.

Spelling "rules" are usually made up after the fact, if that makes sense; nobody, in the development of English spelling, started with a nice, tidy set of rules; spelling conventions developed over time and only began to be fixed when printing became widespread. People come up with descriptive "rules" that fit a majority of words but don't perfectly describe the language because English is just more complicated and diverse than the rules allow for. Spalding, as one example of a set of rules, deals with this partly by telling the student to "think to spell"--which sometimes means ignoring the actual, living pronunciation of a word and instead thinking of a pronunciation that does fit the "rules". A simple example would be always using the long e sound for the word "the" even though that pronunciation is relatively uncommon in normal usage.

Spelling rules can be helpful, but it takes some significant mental acrobatics to wedge all of English into their prescribed patterns.

[Paige]

8 minutes ago, square_25 said:

 

I have a good visual memory and find spelling fun and easy, so as a result, while I’ve intuited some “rules”, there are some (like the idea of closed and open syllables) I’ve literally never thought about. So I’m intrigued by this idea! Any idea how well it works? That is, do most closed syllables really contain a short vowel, if we go by the “natural” syllable divisions and don’t attempt to make our syllable divisions fit the rules? Are there other guidelines that would help me pronounce longer words I’ve never heard spoken? I’m usually comically off on those...

Yes, but there are exceptions that have their own rules. Most closed syllables are short- except when the closed syllable ends in a consonant team like -nd, -ld, etc. or if they are r-controlled. (ex. Bold, kind, tart) 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by Paige

[maize]

3 minutes ago, square_25 said:

Well, yeah — English is a ridiculous mishmash of stuff! I remember that the resulting smorgasbord (meta-humor intended ;-)) of words was very helpful when I was working on my science fiction translations, because I could make up for the differences in sentence structure (Russian has cases and the grammar isn’t order-dependent) using precise vocabulary.

I have a good visual memory and find spelling fun and easy, so as a result, while I’ve intuited some “rules”, there are some (like the idea of closed and open syllables) I’ve literally never thought about. So I’m intrigued by this idea! Any idea how well it works? That is, do most closed syllables really contain a short vowel, if we go by the “natural” syllable divisions and don’t attempt to make our syllable divisions fit the rules? Are there other guidelines that would help me pronounce longer words I’ve never heard spoken? I’m usually comically off on those...

Even native English speakers are often "off" on pronunciation of words we've never heard.

Often, the only way to know if a syllable is "closed" or "open" is by knowing how the word is pronounced--so helpful huh? We can say that si-lent has an open first syllable and rob-in has a closed first syllable--but only because we already know how to pronounce those words. Doubled consonants where they exist are helpful in signaling short vowel (or schwa) / "closed syllable", but a single consonant does not necessarily make an "open syllable".

A lot depends on which syllables are emphasized, but once again we run up against the non-standardized nature of English words; there aren't usually any clues to emphasis in the written form and no rule that applies language wide (unlike, say, Spanish in which the stressed syllable is usually the last or second to last--depending on ending consonant--unless otherwise marked by a diacritic).

You might find this book interesting:

https://smile.amazon.com/ABCs-All-Their-Tricks-Reference/dp/0880621400/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=the+abcs+and+all+their+tricks&qid=1582126570&sprefix=the+abcs&sr=8-1

 

 

[Jentrovert]

1 hour ago, Paige said:

It's been a long, long, long time since we did AAS, but I thought aging would be divided a-ging because I thought if you have vcv then the consonant (usually) goes with the second vowel unless there's a reason not to. Do I have it backwards? 

I find syllable division to be helpful in teaching spelling and reading to my younger kids. It doesn't work for every word because our language has so many imported words and things evolve, but it works much better than shooting in the dark. 

You're probably right; when I said I checked the syllable division, all I meant was that I checked a dictionary. I didn't think about what PeterPan mentioned above, that spelling and speech syllable breaks may be different.

[Ellie]

1 hour ago, Paige said:

It's been a long, long, long time since we did AAS, but I thought aging would be divided a-ging because I thought if you have vcv then the consonant (usually) goes with the second vowel unless there's a reason not to. Do I have it backwards? 

I find syllable division to be helpful in teaching spelling and reading to my younger kids. It doesn't work for every word because our language has so many imported words and things evolve, but it works much better than shooting in the dark. 

I don't think that's right.

In this word, you divide it between the base word and the suffix. I believe that rule would trump any other rule, although I haven't even heard that one before.

[maize]

The Wikipedia "Syllable" article is interesting for those who want to look into a deeper linguistical analysis of syllabification.

This snippet is relevant to the discussion here:

"Syllabification is the separation of a word into syllables, whether spoken or written. In most languages, the actually spoken syllables are the basis of syllabification in writing too. Due to the very weak correspondence between sounds and letters in the spelling of modern English, for example, written syllabification in English has to be based mostly on etymological i.e. morphological instead of phonetic principles. English written syllables therefore do not correspond to the actually spoken syllables of the living language."

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by maize

[maize]

In other words, when we break words into syllables according to how the words are spoken it isn't necessarily going to look like the way the the syllables are broken down in a dictionary.

[Terabith]

I don't think it's a closed syllable.  It's divided a ging.  But also because the root word is age, where the e both makes the a long and makes the g say /j/.  

[MerryAtHope]

11 hours ago, Paige said:

It's been a long, long, long time since we did AAS, but I thought aging would be divided a-ging because I thought if you have vcv then the consonant (usually) goes with the second vowel unless there's a reason not to. Do I have it backwards? 

I find syllable division to be helpful in teaching spelling and reading to my younger kids. It doesn't work for every word because our language has so many imported words and things evolve, but it works much better than shooting in the dark. 

 

You're correct. The difficulty is that there are two ways to divide words (and AAS actually works on both). One is according to pronunciation (a-ging) and one is according to morphology (ag(e)-ing). The dictionary shows both divisions. The pronunciation guide will show the division according to pronunciation, and the first entry (the "bolded" one if you still have a print dictionary) shows the division according to morphology. Sometimes it's hard to find an example when you are talking about words with suffixes, but driver is one you can usually find. See this entry for driver in the Merriam Webster Dictionary online for driver to see what I mean. The first entry shows driv-er, but the pronunciation guide shows the division after dri.

Sometimes both divisions are the same, but in some words they are different.

In AAS, students practice dividing words according to pronunciation and they also practice writing root words and adding suffixes--so they get practice both ways.

So for aging--you can think of it as retaining the long A sound from the root word (age) or you can think of it having the long A because it's in an open syllable: a-ging. 

HTH some!

[Paige]

1 hour ago, MerryAtHope said:

 

You're correct. The difficulty is that there are two ways to divide words (and AAS actually works on both). One is according to pronunciation (a-ging) and one is according to morphology (ag(e)-ing). The dictionary shows both divisions. The pronunciation guide will show the division according to pronunciation, and the first entry (the "bolded" one if you still have a print dictionary) shows the division according to morphology. Sometimes it's hard to find an example when you are talking about words with suffixes, but driver is one you can usually find. See this entry for driver in the Merriam Webster Dictionary online for driver to see what I mean. The first entry shows driv-er, but the pronunciation guide shows the division after dri.

Sometimes both divisions are the same, but in some words they are different.

In AAS, students practice dividing words according to pronunciation and they also practice writing root words and adding suffixes--so they get practice both ways.

So for aging--you can think of it as retaining the long A sound from the root word (age) or you can think of it having the long A because it's in an open syllable: a-ging. 

HTH some!

That is what I thought. I liked AAS because it gave us a system for spelling and reading at the same time that usually works. I think in higher levels of AAS, you are taught how to look at a word like aging and intuit that the base word would be VcE so you can then spell other versions of the word. 

OP- Your kids are young enough that you may like AAS. The kind, bold, etc rule I mentioned above are covered under a rule relating only to the vowels I and O, so it recognizes that it won't work for words like band. 

Edited February 20, 2020 by Paige

[Jentrovert]

13 hours ago, MerryAtHope said:

 

You're correct. The difficulty is that there are two ways to divide words (and AAS actually works on both). One is according to pronunciation (a-ging) and one is according to morphology (ag(e)-ing). The dictionary shows both divisions. The pronunciation guide will show the division according to pronunciation, and the first entry (the "bolded" one if you still have a print dictionary) shows the division according to morphology. Sometimes it's hard to find an example when you are talking about words with suffixes, but driver is one you can usually find. See this entry for driver in the Merriam Webster Dictionary online for driver to see what I mean. The first entry shows driv-er, but the pronunciation guide shows the division after dri.

Sometimes both divisions are the same, but in some words they are different.

In AAS, students practice dividing words according to pronunciation and they also practice writing root words and adding suffixes--so they get practice both ways.

So for aging--you can think of it as retaining the long A sound from the root word (age) or you can think of it having the long A because it's in an open syllable: a-ging. 

HTH some!

 

Thank you, yes, this helps a lot. 

[Jentrovert]

11 hours ago, Paige said:

That is what I thought. I liked AAS because it gave us a system for spelling and reading at the same time that usually works. I think in higher levels of AAS, you are taught how to look at a word like aging and intuit that the base word would be VcE so you can then spell other versions of the word. 

OP- Your kids are young enough that you may like AAS. The kind, bold, etc rule I mentioned above are covered under a rule relating only to the vowels I and O, so it recognizes that it won't work for words like band. 

Thanks! So far, Barton is working wonderfully for us, but I'll keep it in mind if we get to a point we don't need intervention level curric. AAS would be a less expensive choice, if we get to that point.