How I Taught My Kid to Read • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#171

Post by InitialLastName » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 3:43 PM UTC

kingofpandora wrote: post #93

helloguillecl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. But they are very few and consistent rules. The sound of "H" will be consistent, unless it is actually a "CH", which is another letter phonetically speaking (some dictionaries would treat it a a separate letter).

England has rules - albeit not simple ones - such that about 85% (IIRC) of never before seen words can be pronounced correctly. Obviously I'm paraphrasing someone else's study here and may be getting it slightly wrong but the gist is that English is more decipherable than it first appears.

There are so many words in your second sentence that belie your point that it almost seems like you wrote it that way.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#172

Post by Fins » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #57

freediver wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serbian is a slavic language with 100% letter for letter pronunciation. You can probably learn to read in Serbian in 30 mins and impress your friends. Understanding it is another matter :)

No, you still actually need to properly learn the language. Just reading the letters out loud will make you miss the word accents/stress, at the very least you'll sounds wrong, at worst you'll mix up words. Russian is even harder, as accent can change the sound a letter makes - e.g. unstressed "o" is pronounced as "a".

That's regional accent. In Moscow it would be like that, but in other parts unstressed "a" would be pronounced more like "o" instead.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#173

Post by simonebrunozzi » Wed, Jul 10, 2019, 10:21 PM UTC

helloguillecl wrote: post #43

burfog wrote: post #15

You teach Russian or Spanish with phonics. You teach Chinese with whole-word. English needs a bit of both, since it is mostly phonetic. An on-demand approach to phonics works very well. The rules and exceptions are pointed out as mistakes are made. This avoids the boredom of drilling endless phonics rules and the long-term difficulty of whole-word. A common mistake with phonics is the accidental association of specif…

As a native Spanish-speaker I'm astonished to learn that phonics is not the only way to teach reading in English. It makes sense, since phonics are way more difficult to follow in English than in Spanish (written Spanish maps 1-to-1 to the phonetics)

AFAIK, neither Spanish, nor Italian (my native language) maps 1:1. The concept you are referring to is called Phonemic Ortography [0].

And let me add, it's a common mistake by Italians and Spanish and Japanese native speakers to think that their own language phonetics maps 1:1 with written.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#174

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 12:33 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #173

helloguillecl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native Spanish-speaker I'm astonished to learn that phonics is not the only way to teach reading in English. It makes sense, since phonics are way more difficult to follow in English than in Spanish (written Spanish maps 1-to-1 to the phonetics)

AFAIK, neither Spanish, nor Italian (my native language) maps 1:1. The concept you are referring to is called Phonemic Ortography [0]. And let me add, it's a common mistake by Italians and Spanish and Japanese native speakers to think that their own language phonetics maps 1:1 with written. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

Japanese is pretty close to 1:1 mapping if you write using Hiragana for example. Its not complete since there are some words written the same way to which you give a different intonation, but compared to languages like English or French its WAY more standardized.

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#175

Post by naniwaduni » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #173

helloguillecl wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native Spanish-speaker I'm astonished to learn that phonics is not the only way to teach reading in English. It makes sense, since phonics are way more difficult to follow in English than in Spanish (written Spanish maps 1-to-1 to the phonetics)

AFAIK, neither Spanish, nor Italian (my native language) maps 1:1. The concept you are referring to is called Phonemic Ortography [0]. And let me add, it's a common mistake by Italians and Spanish and Japanese native speakers to think that their own language phonetics maps 1:1 with written. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

I'd challenge any Japanese native who somehow believes this to read any nontrivial roster of names...

Re: How I Taught My Kid to Read

#176

Post by laumars » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 10:00 AM UTC

andrei_says_ wrote: post #169

laumars wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dislike the dismissive + condescending label you try to attach to someone you haven’t really met. Labeling while effective, is not clean argument. You need to read back this discussion because I've been anything but dismissive and condescending while you have been using language like "condescending", "humiliating", "degrading" and "dismissive" throughout. In fact if you do read it back you'd also realise that I'm…

> You're being a tad over dramatic :) You don’t know me , and trying to frame me as something or other is a technique to dismiss my statements. Ad hominem is not an argument, although it works because human brains are vulnerable to fallacies. If you are curious about why I used strong words you may ask :) And, I appreciate the conversation and your clarification.

> You don’t know me, and trying to frame me as something or other is a technique to dismiss my statements. Ad hominem is not an argument, although it works because human brains are vulnerable to fallacies.

You're reading far to much into that statement. It was simply an expression stating "your wording is unnecessarily extreme". A point I stand by. The terms you used go far beyond reasonable judgement.

> If you are curious about why I used strong words you may ask :)

If you're using intentionally provocative wording which requires an explanation then you shouldn't be surprised if people take those comments on face value when you don't supply an explanation.