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.

But it does change the point you are making

"cow" isn't c-a-u it is /k/ /a?/ you can't remove the /?/ because it is part of /a?/ not a separate sound

No it isn't splitting hairs it is trying to show you that the symbols of the phonetic alphabet aren't directly interchangeable with the letters of the Latin alphabet that share similar features.

Doesn't mean they're not separate sounds though. Even if they had no meaning in English separately at all they'd still be separate sounds, just not separate English phonemes.

Let me try to explain the point I was trying to make with the ow example again. It was a subsidiary point, and I conceded it in the same paragraph. The point was that the quote I quoted was explaining phonemes as smallest units that could not be changed without changing meaning. I think you said something similar yourself mrz. Picking another example where both constituent phones (phonetic sound units) are phonemes in their own right, say we look at "bay", phonetically /bei/ (the phonetic symbol for the i doesn't have a dot but I don't know how to do that). Now, we can change the i for a d and get /bed/ which happens to have the same phonetic symbols as its spelling "bed". So I seem to have changed a smaller component of the sound /ei/ and changed the meaning. So I don't fully understand how phonologists define phonemes yet.

However, that has no bearing on my main point which was that the phonemes for diphthongs are made up of two or more separate sounds.

the-stewardship.org/research/blte.htm
This explanation seems relatively concise but can't vouch for quality.

But they don't have any meaning catkind that's the point

/a/ is the symbol for a low back unrounded vowel sound
/?/ is the symbol for a lax high back rounded vowel sound

which combine to create the sound we can hear in the word ouch!

in your bay example - /'be?/

/e/ is the symbol for tense mid front unrounded vowel (nothing to do with the letter e)
/?/ is the symbol for a lax high front unrounded vowel (nothing to do with the letter i)

I've just come across the definition of a phoneme as set out in the glossary section of the new National Curriculum (English) document;

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that signals a distinct, contrasting meaning. For example
/t/ contrasts with /k/ to signal the difference between tap and cap
/t/ ontrasts with /l/ to signal the difference between bought and ball
It is this contrast in meaning that tells us there are two distinct phonemes
at work.

Phonemes

Phonemes are the linguistically contrastive or significant sounds (or sets of sounds) of a language. Such a contrast is usually demonstrated by the existence of minimal pairs or contrast in identical environment. Minimal pairs are pairs of words which vary only by the identity of the segment (another word for a single speech sound) at a single location in the word (eg./mæt/ and /kæt/ mat and cat or /'bo?/ and /'ba?/ - bow and bow)

Yes mrz, that's a slightly more wordy explanation of the National Curriculum definition, but it's actually saying the same thing.

I thought it was clearer ... and explains why /ow/ is considered a phoneme

I only used an i as I didn't have the symbol /?/ available, as I explained in my post. And /e/ is the phonetic symbol for the sound e in bed also.

OK, so we have the following transcriptions.

1. /mæt/ and /kæt/, mat and cat - difference being phonemes /m/ and /k/
2. /'bo?/ and /'ba?/, bow and bow - phonemes /o?/ and /a?/
3. /set/ and /s?t/, set and sit - phonemes /e/ and /?/
4. /bed/ and /be?/, bed and bay - phonemes /e//d/ and /e?/

I think 1)-3) are minimal pairs, and 4) isn't?
Why is 2) a minimal pair for /o?/ and /a?/ not for /o/ and /a/?
Why is 4) not a minimal pair for /d/ and /?/? Or is it? Changing the sound changes the meaning as per the definitions.

"/a/ is the symbol for a low back unrounded vowel sound
/?/ is the symbol for a lax high back rounded vowel sound
which combine to create the sound we can hear in the word ouch!"
Great, we're agreed there then. That's all I meant about ow not being a single sound.

"Why is 2) a minimal pair for /o?/ and /a?/ not for /o/ and /a/?"

because there isn't an /o/ or /a/ in either word.

"Why is 4) not a minimal pair for /d/ and /?/?"

because you changed two phonemes

You can only say there isn't an /o/ or /a/ once you've decided that /o?/ and /a?/ are your phonemes and not /o/, /a/ and /?/. There is an /o/ and an /a/ phonetic sound in the word. Why is 2) not a minimal pair that shows /o/ and /a/ are distinct phonemes? Changing one sound to the other changes the meaning of the word as per your definition of phonemes.

you still seem to be confusing phonetic symbols with the alphabet catkind ... with the phonetic symbols you listen to the spoken word and assign the symbols to match what you hear ... it has nothing at all to do with the conventional spelling of words. You know that /o?/ and /a?/ are the sounds in the words because that is what you hear not /o/ and /a/

I think I understand the phonetics side, I'm not claiming the phonics side is the same but I don't fully understand yet how phonemes are defined, that's why I'm asking.

You do hear /o/ and /?/ sounds in the word, that's what the phonetic transcription means. Phonemes are supposed to have a definition that relates to the sounds and the linguistics not the spelling, so lets leave spelling out of it for now. The definitions you've given me seem to be saying the phoneme is the smallest unit of sound where changing it changes the meaning of the word. But changing the /o/ to the /a/ does change the meaning of the word in example 2). What can you do with the /m/ and the /k/ my example 1) that you can't do with the /o/ and the /a/ in example 2) that means the former are phonemes and the latter aren't?

No it doesn't
Dipthongs are vowels whose quality noticeably alters as the tongue moves in the course of their production. They are represented by two letters, one indicating the start of the diphthongal movement, the other indicating its end or general direction (nothing to do with other phonemes.) In English the movement of the tongue has three possible directions higher and to the front would be transcribed by adding /?/ or /i:/ , higher to the back would be indicated by adding /?/ or /u:/ or central /?/ or /?:/ the symbols represent how the sound is produced.

If bow and bow had an /o/ or /a/ in them then they would change the meaning but they don't.

Ah I see, so it's just because the two sounds are slurred together you consider it as a unit phonologically. That makes sense for vowels.
What about /nk/? Two phonemes or one?

The confusion comes because phonics does not teach phonemes, it teaches phoneme / grapheme pairings.
You could teach ow = ow or aw (I can't do the symbols)
Or you could teach o = o or a and w = w
You get to the same place in the end. I would suggest that the decisions are based on covering the most words with the least permutations of letter sounds. The larger the chunks of letters, the fewer permutations in the word, but the less words it applies to, so there is a trade off to be considered in each decision.
Mrz argues that phonics is as it is because there is only one solution. I think the alternative argument is that there are many possible solutions and that simplicity and efficiency are the deciding factors. Which brings me back to my point that in certain cases, learning certain phoneme grapheme pairings that are not sufficiently well used is just inefficient. There comes a point where you may as well just learn that it's a yacht.

Yes we have got a bit off the point again haven't we

No mickeys mrz is not arguing that at all

You seem to believe that because the phonetic symbol has two part it means it is two sounds that isn't the case.the two parts indicate that the tongue moves to produce the sound. There are other phonetic symbols that have three parts ...

For most children, they just learn for each word which sound(s) the ough spelling makes. A bit like they learn that live and read can have two pronunciations and meanings.

Here's the IPA chart linked from the International Phonetic Association. No two-part-symbols. Sometimes they use what they describe as a a tie bar to indicate that the diphthong sounds are slurred together, or sometimes they use other bits of notation to show that one of the sounds is short. In my dictionary these are missed out.
www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/IPA_chart_%28C%292005.pdf