Phonic sounds in because

[maydaychild]

Could one of you wonderful MNetters help me with 'because' as Dd has it in her high freq this week

What is making the or sound and is the e magic
Thanks

'au' makes the 'aw' sound like in sauce and Santa Claus and pause

Not sure if 'e' is magic, it does make the 's' into a 'z'

the au is making the or - as is cause.

No idea what the e is doing ! Or how you explain it when you say becoz rather than becaws !

Just one of the myriad of English words that you just have to learn.

Does anyone say becaws? Thought it was just my Grandma, who also said 'Syoopermarket'. I say bicoz.

We do Read,Write,Inc and 'because' is classed as a red word as the rules don't apply basically! They just have to learn it and know it can't be sounded out.

My ds was taught to spell it with "Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants"..consequently he spells it "BECOUSE"...! They should maybe have made sure he could spell "Always" first..

haggis

Thanks helpful so far.

You can't really learn this one phonically-it's on the "tricky words" list and really needs to be learned by look and say methods.

I use "Big Elephants Can't Always Use Small Exits"

It does 'work' like other words though, clause, pause, cause ermmmm...any others? So there is a 'rule' which can apply to other words too. It's not weird in isolation .

Haggis

My ds was the same except it was the small exits version.

For spelling purposes, it does help to think of it as be-cause, even if those of us who are not as posh as MerryMarigold's gran, actually pronounce it becoz.

CecilyP, she wasn't really posh but wanted to be. She sent my Dad to elocution because they couldn't afford private school!

We do Read,Write,Inc and 'because' is classed as a red word as the rules don't apply basically! They just have to learn it and know it can't be sounded out

Then you are not doing Read Write Inc properly. It is a Red Word because it contains graphemes which haven't yet been taught. It is a perfectly decodable word /b/, /ee/, /c/, /ua/,/s/ and should be taught as decodable but with a 'grotty grapheme' (Ruth's terminology..) As should all the Red Words. (It's just a variation on JP's 'tricky words')

I tell my kids that they have to 'say it posh' in order to remember the spelling. Like the Queen... Because they don't always remember that big elephants can always understand small elephants... It's a bit difficult when the big elephants end up understanding little elephants

'se' is a very common grapheme, words like house, mouse, loose, moose and cheese all contain it. The 'e' on the end of a word doesn't always modify the preceding vowel. It is a shame that teachers give the impression that it does and that that impression remains a lifelong belief

Maizie
When you say posh, are you pronouncing b ee c aws ?

My confusion is the or/aw sound. Somehow, if I know the correct breakdown in my head, it helps me show her.

It is 'becaws' in Scotland. It is regular here bar the silent e.

It's in the high frequency words because it's not one you can sound out, your DD just has to learn it by sight.

Well, it will depend on accent, but even putting an /or/ sound into 'because' sounds posh to my kids..

You just have to base it on whatever you would normally say if you saw 'au' in a word, e.g. like 'haul' or 'audience'. I know that most people seem to say 'becoz'.

I teach 'or' and 'aw' as representing the same sound, because it mostly does. If it doesn't quite agree with the children's accents they 'tweak' it to what ever they do say.

(BTW. I've counted up about 14 different ways to spell the /or/ sound. It's a pig...)

There's a challenge for you all, find all the ways of spelling /or/

Sorry, I've talked about 'au' when you said 'aw'. But they do both spell the same sound, in the same way that 'ou' and 'ow' do. 'u' and 'w' have been very much interchangeable over the centuries.

Thank you maizie. Makes much more sense now

When I say because I hear the 'au' as /o/ rather than /or/.

Am I common? :o

fuzzpig, I'm with you, it's /o/ as in Au-s-t-r-a-l-i-a

fuzzpig, I'm common, too! But it is much easier to explain the 'au' as /or/ because it is a far more common correspondence than the /o/ for 'au' as in Australia (anyway, maverick, the posh people I know say Orstralia . I didn't spend years dragging my dd round Pony Club rallies for nothing, you know! )

And Orstria!

In ordinary speech, the "or" sound (posh version) is assimilated to schwa (an "uh" sound). Assimilation is a normal feature of speech, and many unstressed vowels have that pronunciation in typical speech.

or/ore/our/aw/au/augh/oor/ough/ and a few more...

I'm with [ladeda] sorry [maizie]
My kids were both told that it's a 'red word' on read wrote inc and therefore it can't be sounded out, even if theyve learned the graphemes, our rWI guidance from school says red words with a star can eventually be sounded out, in our pack because isn't one of them, so they just have to learn it. Each to their own though!