Friday, April 13, 2007

Jade's pech

One downside of English is that the spelling is not logical. Kids are more logical.

I am visited by Jade, 5 years, today. She drew a picture, and wrote under it: "Jade's pech". I was flummuxed, and asked what it said. It says: "Jade's Picture."
Of course. P-E says pe, and C-H says chu. Pe-chu. "Picture". Logical.

Monsieur Beep added...
Children are very logical indeed when it comes to spelling, and get punished for doing so, in school and at home!!

For example I very often hear 6year-olds using a logical form of a verb, and NOT the irregular form .
For example this child would say "I go-ed home" instead of "I went home".
The same goes for irregular German verbs.

Is it such a major fault for a child to communicate akkording to the rules, and not to irregular hokuspokus?

I know I know education in school wouldn't take so long, and many teachers would be underemployed if the kids wouldn't have to learn all the irregular stuff in a new language.

Indeed. I very much admire the Norwegians for amending their spelling thoroughly decades ago (I think in the mid-20th) to be strictly phonetic.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

This sounds like a dialect issue. There are people here in the South of USA that say it just that way, and their not kids anymore.

Don't axe me, axe Al Sharpton why.

Lorin

Anonymous said...

"Picture", aaAAaah!
It's so clir!

Anonymous said...

Children are very logical indeed when it comes to spelling, and get punished for doing so, in school and at home!!

For example I very often hear 6year-olds using a logical form of a verb, and NOT the irregular form .
For example this child would say "I go-ed home" instead of "I went home".
The same goes for irregular German verbs.

Is it such a major fault for a child to communicate akkording to the rules, and not to irregular hokuspokus?

I know I know education in school wouldn't take so long, and many teachers would be underemployed if the kids wouldn't have to learn all the irregular stuff in a new language.

TaTa.

Anonymous said...

cc

:-))

Beep

Anonymous said...

Kids are perfect artists. They can import ideas through their intuitive channel wholesale.

We adults have lost most of it, which we try to make up in craftmanship.

Picasso had the ability kids have. Some others too. So we know its possible!

Cool kid this Jade friend of yours.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Jade rocks.
It's summer weather here now, so we went to the garden and shot a little ball. She sometimes shot her shoe further than the ball went. :)

Spotty said...

Many years ago this Girl, Tara, and I got stranded in Washington DC after a Grateful Dead show (that’s a whole ‘another story). We ended up on these big steps with a guy that was waiting for a ride from his mother. He was Norwegian and visiting the states for the summer (he really liked the Dead show).

After speaking with him for a while, I asked that he speak some Norwegian for us. He laughed, and then agreed, explaining that he would share a poem, and follow it with a translation to the best of his abilities. Neither Tara or I were properly prepared for what he was about to treat us to. In his native tongue, without us understanding a word, we could only sense the extreme dramatic emotion behind the words - the words > each pronounced word seemed to carry, hmmm, a little action movie - for lack of a better description.

Then when he finished and received our “WOW” he continued with the translation in English. It started out something like…

Alas, There it is!
On my table…
The most beautiful breadcrumb in the world!
[…]

It continued with an incredible sensitivity to an appreciation of that breadcrumb.

Anonymous said...

TTL said...
"Picasso had the ability kids have."


Hey, I have a kid living with me who draws even better than Picasso! ;-)

Eolake said...
"She sometimes shot her shoe further than the ball went."


"Karate Kid 5: she returns, and she's got new tricks!"
Not all of which are up her sleeve...

Or maybe she was kicking against a very strong wind?
"Shoot the talcum to me, Malcolm!"

Cliff Prince said...

ghoti = fish

This is an old game.

"Gh" as in "enough" yields the sound of "F".

"O" as in "women" yields the sound of "I".

And "ti" as in "nation" yields the sound of "SH".

Hence, "ghoti" is pronounced "fish".

Har har har.

I don't want English spelling to be updated. We'd lose all our anachronisms, sure, but we'd lose all our historical connectedness as well. Who wants to go to a summer vacashun in a yurruppeen mudeevul shattow and drink wa-een all day? Or read about a teddy bear named Alloo-ish-uz.

Anonymous said...

Lemme guess, Final : you're a disgruntled kindergarten teacher in bad need for a vacation, right?

These Kids Next Door can be quite stubborn, I'll give you that. ;-)

Cliff Prince said...

Pascal: the teddy bear named Aloysius isn't from Kindergarten ...