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Primary education

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Original poster

The word 'pool' is driving me potty!

106 replies

18yearstooold · 20/02/2015 13:01

Trying to identify alternatives to /ue/ in a list of words

I have a stupid accent and when I say pool it is neither an /u/ or an /oo/

Gah!!!!!

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Mashabell · 21/02/2015 11:32

Tuesday is a perfect example of 'ue'.
It's not the main spelling in the stem of words (use, tune, music, cute ...).

It is in endings:
Like cue, due, statue, rescue. but with the exceptions i listed earlier.

I decided to call it the /yoo/ rather than /ue/ sound, because it has less ambiguous sound, unlike 'u-e': mute, brute ...

mrz · 21/02/2015 13:05

No masha the /yoo/ in Tuesday has the same spelling as argue, cue, queue, avenue, statue, revue etc...

mrz · 21/02/2015 13:09

Have you considered that the origin of Tue's day would have the spelling at the end of the word ?????????????????????

catkind · 21/02/2015 14:38

I think masha's saying that /yoo/ at the end of words is usually ue, but in the middle of words is usually u_e. But don't see any benefit to dividing correspondences into main and other at all really.

For my accent pool is definitely an /oo/ not a /yoo/ or anything else. For Liverpudlian friend it's more /oo//w//uh/

mrz: In linguistics I would also separate it but not for four year olds learning phonics

I noticed recently that my nearly 3 yr old does tend to separate the sounds in diphthongs. If you ask her to spell new and she'll say n-y-oo. Made me think of our previous discussion on phonetics!

mrz · 21/02/2015 15:33

What would she do with unit or unicorn catkind?

catkind · 21/02/2015 16:07

Asked DD how she would spell unit and she said "with a yuh". Sigh. Asked her to spell unicorn and she said "yuh - oo - nnn - uh - corn".

(It's not child abuse, honest, "spelling" is a favourite game at the moment as she's copying big brother. And yes I know it should be yyy not yuh.)

mrz · 21/02/2015 16:10

You've just identified why it's not taught as separate sounds in phonics ...

catkind · 21/02/2015 16:17

Except sometimes it is, like in the word "you".
It's what I was saying on the other thread about phonemes being about practically useful units for spelling rather than individual sounds as such.

mrz · 21/02/2015 16:37

In linguistics a diphthong is considered an unsegmentable gliding single sound.

catkind · 21/02/2015 18:13

/yoo/ isn't a diphthong is it? I thought it's /ju?/ in phonetic symbols, if that comes out right. Looks a bit like a j, then a u with a colon-ish thing. Symbols looking different again today, mrz's scream looks like a load of diamonds with question marks in to me.

mrz · 21/02/2015 18:59

It's generally classified as a diphthong by linguists

catkind · 21/02/2015 19:37

Oh okay. Do you count the word "you" as one phoneme or two then? I've only ever seen it analysed as /y/ /oo/. But at least in my accent it's identical in sound to the u in unit.

I'm not sure about your description of a diphthong there. I've more commonly heard it described as two vowel sounds combined within one syllable.

I found this discussion interesting on a linguistics forum, though obvs can't vouch for the posters' academic status. linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/1144/what-is-the-difference-between-a-diphthong-and-a-glide

mrz · 21/02/2015 19:59

I would count you as having two separate sounds because they can be segmented in the word whereas they can't in new (/n/ /y/ /oo/?)

mrz · 21/02/2015 20:04

/y/ us classed as a semi vowel

maizieD · 21/02/2015 20:31

Catkind,
How about suggesting to your DC that sometimes the 2 sounds /y/ & /oo/ can be spelled with one letter 'u' (as in 'unicorn) in just the same way that 'x' spells /k/ & /s/ ?

catkind · 21/02/2015 22:24

Thanks for the thought maizie, but DS doesn't have a problem with it, and DD is still 2 so a bit young for all that! I just felt her choice of segmentation was interesting as being unbiased by any knowledge of written language.

And as far as I'm concerned I have yet to be convinced away from my position that diphthongs contain two sounds, and phonemes are units of sound pragmatically chosen for spelling purposes; so it doesn't cause me any problems at all.

I'm just curious as to how mrz can hear two sounds in "you" but only one in the /yoo/ sounds in "unit" or "new". They sound identical to me. Do you for example phonetically transcribe those three sounds the same, or how do they differ?

maizieD · 21/02/2015 22:41

I suspect that the difference between what you & mrz hear may be one of accent. Accent is really irrelevant to phonics; it shouldn't be the cause of big arguments on what (or how many) 'sound' is represented by a particular grapheme! The grapheme represents the 'sound' that an individual uses in any particular word. And if the individual is teaching a class they have to use the 'sounds' which are common to the class if their own accent differs from the that of pupils.

(Though I could never bring myself to teach children that 'th' represented /f/...)

catkind · 21/02/2015 23:04

(Though I could never bring myself to teach children that 'th' represented /f/...)

I think we decided before that mrz and I are both pretty much RP, so I'd be surprised if it was accent.

I don't disagree with what you're saying about sounds and graphemes maizie; but mrz has been very insistent in the past that phonemes exist independently of written language as a minimal unit of sound, so I don't know where to start with her except with the sounds.

I should probably link to this previous thread as I have referred to it twice now:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/a2172723-More-difficult-phonics-help-pls

mrz · 22/02/2015 06:08

How would you represent the sound /y/ in new catkind?

mrz · 22/02/2015 06:09

Sorry catkind my accent is definitely not RP

JudgeRinderSays · 22/02/2015 08:42

what does RP mean?

TheFirstOfHerName · 22/02/2015 08:57

Received Pronunciation (think BBC newsreader)

catkind · 22/02/2015 09:17

Oh sorry must have misremembered. Maybe it is accent then. I'd transcribe all of them phonetically /ju:/, as my dictionary does. Where that's a phonetic symbol j (semi-vowel as you say), not the letter j.

mrz · 22/02/2015 09:55

If I were transcribing spoken language I would use the phonetic symbol ju?but in everyday use we represent sounds using the letters of the alphabet so my question us how would you represent the sound /y/ if you wanted to write the word new?

maizieD · 22/02/2015 10:33

OT
Really interesting discussion on the link you posted, catkind. Was puzzled as to how I'd missed it but realised I was swilling cocktails in Portugal at the time

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