More difficult phonics help pls

[Firstconkers]

Would anyone experienced in phonic decoding, pls help me understand and explain to my DC the ough and augh sounds.
There seems to be several sounds for ough? Thought, through, cough, bough etc
In cough and laugh, are the sounds broken down ie gh is f?

I have goggled but don't seem to be able to find a simple and straight forward explaination. Should I just teach as sight words but then what about learning to spell the words. Much appreciated.

I was going to say w or oo for the second sound in plough. But checked my dictionary, they say u as in put. All the following vowel sounds (diphthongs) are separated into two sounds:

Ending in i as in sit:
ay in day
y in my
oy in boy

Ending in u as in put:
o as in no
ow as in how

Ending in schwa:
ear as in near
air as in hair (now I can hear it Micksy!)
oor as in poor
ire as in fire
our as in sour
(the last two having three distinct sounds)

Certainly for vowel sounds I think the ones we pick as "phonemes" are more chosen for the sake of easy learning to read rather than actual single- sound-ness.

catkind I think you are looking at the phonemic transcription of the word?

plough is 3 sounds /p/ /l/ /ow/ with the ough being the spelling for /ow/

www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/plough_2

InfantSchoolHead,

There are indeed quite a few English digraphs (two letter spellings) and even trigraphs which spell both single sounds and two, and different sounds as well.
ea: - bread, break, creature - create
ui: build, fruit - ruin
eo: people, leopard - leotard
cc: soccer - success
imb: climb - imbibe

You seem to be confusing phonics and phonetics

Mrz
Leaving fancy terminology aside,
children learning to read have to decode the letters in front of them.
The ough and augh words with their different sounds are clearly a bit tricky and take some learning - by every teaching method.

What "fancy terminology" masha? (genuine question)

of course it's more difficult when a single spelling can represent more than one sound but it doesn't help to give misinformation

To most people, 'phonic' and 'phonetic' spellings are the same thing.

To most children, the 30 words with ough and augh are tricky for reading and spelling.

Certainly for vowel sounds I think the ones we pick as "phonemes" are more chosen for the sake of easy learning to read rather than actual single- sound-ness

I agree Catkind - phonemes are just commonly understood units that we can recombine to make up words. They are linguistic rather than scientific, but as long as we are all singing off the same hymn sheet, they give children a way in to beginning to grasp our complex spelling system.

But I didnt say "phonic" and "phonetic" spellings masha ...

I disagree ... written language is a representation of spoken language - the spoken sounds were around long before there was any written language, so the "phonemes" were never chosen for the sake of making learning to read easy.

Spoken language of course has always been made up of sounds (repeatable units) but there will always be variations in opinion about what size those units are. My point was that as long as we are all agreed, through a common understanding, about what we are counting as a unit (e.g. the oy sound in 'boy' being one phoneme not two, then children will (and do) learn to usefully use phonemes and graphemes to read and write.

Surely phonetics is the way spoken language breaks down into single sounds, so is entirely relevant here. The choice of ow as a phoneme is influenced by the pragmatics of English spelling, if we just went on the spoken sounds we'd split it a-oo.
(What I was looking at was the International Phonetic Alphabet spellings in my OED.)

That was a x-post with InfantSchoolHead as I was distracted by children in the middle of writing it.

What I was looking at was the International Phonetic Alphabet spellings in my OED. that is what I was pointing out catkind

The choice of ow as a phoneme is influenced by the pragmatics of English spelling

The point is the "choice" of the /ow/ phoneme has nothing to do with English spelling - the phoneme is the s ou nd we hear when we say p ou ch or c ow or uml au t

But why that particular subsection of the sound mrz? You could equally break it down more into a-oo or break it down less and treat say "out" as a unit. "ow" was chosen as a useful level of breakdown of sound for teaching English spelling. If we spelled using the phonetic alphabet then we'd probably break it down to the single sound level. (And masha would be very happy )

The point is the sounds existed before there was any alphabet phonetic or otherwise.. The sounds/phonemes would be the same even if there was not written language. Listen when you say the word (don't think about the spelling) and you should be able to identify the separate sounds. You can then think about how those sounds are represented in that word.

Can you really not hear that ow is not a single sound even knowing the phonetic split? Perhaps you've been doing phonics too long to hear the sounds in any split apart from the phonemes you teach. What do you see the phonetic split as being if it's not a breakdown into separate sounds?

No when I say cow or owl or ouch or bough I hear 2 sounds c+ow, ow+l! ow+ch and b+ow

I thought of one with consonants, "nk" is taught as a phoneme but actually splits into the two phonemes "ng" "k".

Feel how your mouth moves when you say ow. Doesn't it move from an open a position to a closed w position? Now try saying those two bits separately. They're separate sounds.

Sounds did exist before any alphabet. 'fire' sounds like 'fire', always has and always will; however it could be commonly understood to be a 3 phoneme word (f-igh-er) or a 2 phoneme word f-ire. We have commonly agreed to treat 'ire' as one phoneme, but it could just as easily be segmented into two.

I can't say them separately no matter how hard I try sorry

U ar right Catkin.
Many vowel phonemes are not simply single sounds, as u can tel by how your mouth moves.
The single vowel sounds are just
short a, e, i, o, u and oo (at, end, in, on, up/oop).
The others (ai, au, ee, ie, oe, long oo, ou, yoo, oi, ar, air, er, ir, or).

In more phonetically spelt languages like Lithuanian or Finnish u learn them as such for spelling and they are pronounced as they are written: a-u, a-i, e- ...
In English this is more difficult and also less useful because of the many overlapping spellings (how, slow; cut, put; her, third, early, journey, turn).

Sorry!
Didn't finish the third sentence.

Many vowel phonemes are not simply single sounds, as u can tel by how your mouth moves.
The single vowel sounds are just
short a, e, i, o, u and oo (at, end, in, on, up/oop).
The others (ai, au, ee, ie, oe, long oo, ou, yoo, oi, ar, air, er, ir, or) are vowel blends.

how many sounds can you hear in now masha?