lirazel | (no subject)

I recently listened to a (very interesting, recommended) 6-episode podcast called Sold a Story about why so many USAmerican kids (and Kiwi kids, too, apparently!) can't read. Long story short: a lady from New Zealand came up with this theory that kids don't learn by sounding out the words but by paying attention to context and stuff like this ("three-cueing"). Her ideas took off and schools stopped teaching phonics. There's a big publisher and some superstar reading pedagogy authors who have made an empire from teaching this weird theory despite the fact that neuroscience is very clear that, actually, yes kids do indeed learn phonetically. This is accompanied by a theory that if you just give kids books on topics they're interested in, they will learn to read automatically? I guess? The idea is to make them "passionate" readers but not actually, you know, worry about whether they understand the mechanics of reading. Which, as a lifelong passionate reader, seems wrong-headed.

It's a depressing story (mostly because it appears that upper and upper-middle class families have papered over this problem by hiring private tutors, while poorer and working class kids just suffer), but what I kept getting hung up on was that this has to be an English-language problem, right? The root of this thing has to come down to the fact that English has such weird and quirky spelling for so many words. A language like, say, Spanish that uses an alphabet or syllabic system for phonetic spelling--in which you always, always know how to pronounce the word just by looking at it--could never give rise to such a theory, right?

So the fact that this took off in the Anglophone world has got to be just another manifestation of the way that Anglocentrism bites us in the butt--if any of these people had looked at how kids learn to read Korean or whatever, they would have realized that their theory can't be right?

Or am I missing something?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What I find especially weird when it comes to German is that we had a reformation of our spelling. Neue deutsche Rechtschreibung (new German spelling(?)) is new for a reason. Stuff got simplified and the rules we use nowadays are based on phonetics, as far as I understand it. The usage of "s", "ss" or "ß" doesn't change anymore just cause you use a verb in a different tense for example.

As far as languages go, German with the new spelling rules, is pretty logical.(if you ignore genders....)

Edited 2022-12-02 18:21 (UTC)

I will never get used to Tipp and Schifffahrt, it looks wrong. Why, oh why.

But either way, German is relatively easy, and also was before. But things like hier can ne tricky, because unless the pronounciation is super exaggerated, it could easily be hir. Is it is Eumel or Oimel or Oymel? Is it Ei or Ai? It could be ain Ai im Ayerbecher!

The point is, it's stupid to let kids write the way they hear it, because it depends so much on how something is pronounced. On top of that, we're a country with strong dialects, and I don't even want to imagine what children write like in Bavaria or Saxony when not taught how things are written correctly. I understand why they're later frustrated by reading because they can't sound out the words in their head or writing because it's all wrong and then get bad marks for orthography in secondary school.

But things like hier can ne tricky, because unless the pronounciation is super exaggerated, it could easily be hir. Is it is Eumel or Oimel or Oymel? Is it Ei or Ai? It could be ain Ai im Ayerbecher!

Oh no, what have you done?!?! I don't hear the difference between i and ie, or ei and ai but it just looks so, so wrong.

I didn't even think about dialects! Omg, that would be unreadable.

😂😂

Sorry, sorry.

But this is exactly my point, it looks wrong to you because you learned how to spell! You intuitively know what is correct, because your primary school teacher taught you how and probably had you keep a book where you write down every new word you learned. (Ah, nostalgia....) And then you wrote Diktate where those words were also used.

But the point is, you learned them correctly the first time around and you never convinced yourself that you were right and it is an Ei is an ai (not capitalized, because you can't heart that).

But I agree, it breaks my mind also a little. I don't even have children and never wanted children and I get mad on behalf of every child out there.

But the point is, you learned them correctly the first time around and you never convinced yourself that you were right and it is an Ei is an ai (not capitalized, because you can't heart that).

It's truly awful to think of kids having to unlearn things they learned because they learned them incorrectly. Those poor kids! They deserve better!

But this is exactly my point, it looks wrong to you because you learned how to spell!
Yeah, I know. But it's good that I can do that now. Communication depends on shared rules.

I'm so sorry for all the school children out there. This way of teaching will make life so much more difficult for them in the future.

It was such a huge discussion when that change happened! I was moving from elementary school to Gymnasium and the teachers were all like, "Well I guess you'll have to learn all this new stuff now." XD Looking back, it brought clearer structure to many aspects of the language, especially the whole "s", "ss", "ß" drama!

And still children can't spell...

Someday, someone somewhere will be able to explain to me why languages develop genders. They haven't been able to do it so far, but I live in hope.

Oh! I know a little about that: so basically it's a mix of the cultural surroundings the language develops in and the need for a way to distinguish between the objects and subjects of a sentence. If the culture a language exists in has/had at some point a concept of female nature deities for example, plants and trees are more likely to end up getting adressed as female. So even if the users of the language lose their faith in those deities or zhe knowledge of them, that may stay.

The grammar part is simply, if you have more ways to specify a noun, you can get more precise in refering to it. You can get more flexible in your sentence structure cause the things that belong to gether don't have to be close together.

I hope that makes sense.

the need for a way to distinguish between the objects and subjects of a sentence. ...The grammar part is simply, if you have more ways to specify a noun, you can get more precise in refering to it. You can get more flexible in your sentence structure cause the things that belong to gether don't have to be close together.

Do you know of some examples of this? Because my brain isn't great at thinking about language on a theoretical level.

I hope this German example works:

Die Sonne und der Mond sind Himmelskörper. Sie scheint von allein, er reflektiert ihr Licht.

The English translation would be:
The sun and the moon are celestial bodies. It shines on its own, it reflects its light.

If we pretend, we don't know how the sun and the moon work for a second, we can't tell which one is the light source and which one the reflector, in English. In German we can, cause the sun is considered feminine and the moon is considered masculine.

So the German is closer to:
The sun and the moon are celestial bodies. She shines on her own, he reflects her light.

But in English that makes no sense, unless the sun and the moon as personified in some way. In German it's just grammar.

Another example would be:
Der Hund jagd die Maus, der sonst den ganzen Tag schläft.

The dog hunts the mouse, who usually sleeps the whole day.

Who is usually sleeping? In English we can't tell, in German it's clear.

The dog (masc.) hunts the mouse (fem.), who (masc.) sleeps the whole day.

does that make sense?

Edited 2022-12-02 21:32 (UTC)

It does, thank you! I always work best with examples, and that helped a lot. That's certainly a better theory for why gender developed than any I've ever seen, though in my admittedly incredibly biased opinion, it isn't worth the confusion of having to remember gender for every single noun on the planet!

It definitely makes learning a language harder, but when you grow up with you don't really think about it. It's just part of the words. Also, I think having a gendered language like German as a first language doesn't help a lot, when learning a new one.

It definitely makes learning a language harder, but when you grow up with you don't really think about it. It's just part of the words.

Yeah, definitely! It's such an uphill battle for an adult learner though!

I feel your pain - I'm currently learning Italian and the genders are a problem, 'cause they are different from what I'm used to.