Split digraph/magic E

[ItsIcyOutsideIThinkINeedThorin]

Are there any split digraphs other than 'magic E' or are they one and the same?

Not words, OK, sure. But who are we teaching? For children what we want is a rule which is simple for them to remember and be able to pronounce new words when they come across them.

bon isn't a word either, (well, not an English one.) But add an e and it does become bone
son should become sone
fon, fone
lon, lone
and so on (a la phonics test.)
This isn't about etymology.

Just for the record msz does NOT complain that lots of magic e don't work
msz says that e isn't magical so it isn't logical to call it that.

A magic e makes the letter say its name, rather than its sound.

no it doesn't ...it's a vowel digraph

rather than start with sit, cut etc

start with
toe or lie or cue
toe - toen - tone
lie - lien line
cue- cuet cute

all that is happening is the final sound is inserted in the spelling (digraph) rather than on the end (because someone a few hundred years ago thought it looked better)

sitter - i says its name because of the double t no it doesn't!

You nearly get a split digraph with oa. But it doesn't work because the a creates a second vowel sound

float
Lola
coat
Cola

It does split (and preserve) the digraph, but you get an extra sound. This doesn't happen with e because e on the end of a word can often be silent. I suspect etymologically speaking split digraphs are a coincidence.

there isn't a digraph (split or otherwise) is Lola or Cola

Not any more there isn't, no. But there is in Loa and coa.

Sorry learnandsay but in order to be a split digraph the letters have to represent the sound they would represent if they were together you can't just look for random word that contain the same pair of letters.

That's what I said in my original post. And that's why I think real split digraphs are probably coincidental. A word like sine or mine should probably be pronounced synee and mynee (as in cine camera)

No they aren't!

mine was originally spelt mien but someone decided it would look better spelt mine that's all!

cine is an abbreviation of cinema btw

mein and dein are German words, mein in Anglo-Norman means something else entirely.

except I didn't write mein I wrote mien learnandsay

m ei n - m ie n

I noticed that but mien is not a word that I'm familiar with.

Please read what I wrote learnandsay

A few hundred years ago the spelling was m ie n but it was changed to m i n e retaining the spellings for the sounds but moving the final sound to split the ie spelling (splitting the digraph) simply because someone decided it looked better.

A few hundred years ago people spelled words pretty much as they liked.

What about 'riding'? What makes the 'i' say 'ie'?

The verb is ride. It's had its e removed to allow for the ing ending.

Because ride is still the root word. You just drop the 'e' before adding the 'ing'.

True ... and when spelling was "standardised" (around 1700) they decided that mien would look better as mine

Is it just that it would look better? Often where you have ie oe or ue followed by a consenant, both vowels are pronounced eg

diet
duet
cruet
poem
science

LaBelleDameSansPatience Thu 27-Dec-12 11:37:38

What about 'riding'? What makes the 'i' say 'ie'?

as CecilyP says ing is a suffix

(but remember i is a spelling for the sound "ie")

There were several successive waves of standardisation. Robert Cawdrey's "A Table Alphabeticall," published in 1604, (which doesn't contain the word mien.) Dr Johnson's dictionary 1755 (has mine, belonging to me on page 217.)

Anybody who has access to Elizabethan texts such as Sir Philip Sidney's letter to Queen Elizabeth or William Addlington's translation of The Golden Asse, will see mine spelled myne.

and in some texts you will find it spelt min or myn or mijn or mwyn learnandsay which is why there were attempts to "standardise" English spellings over the years