Jun 19 2007
Read With Mother
I put here, for your delight, the government’s 45 phonemes by which we are to learn to read through the joy of synthetic phonics. Although, according to the BBC’s website, from where this list came, some say there are 44. A scan through the Wikipedia entry for phoneme points out that the number of phonemes in English is dependent on the speaker and averages somewhere between 40 & 45. So 45 for our children to learn? Nanny state? Or a drive to encourage RP?
/a/ cat
/e/ peg, bread
/i/ pig, wanted
/o/ log, want
/u/ plug, love
/ae/ pain, day, gate, station
/ee/ sweet, heat, thief, these
/ie/ tried, light, my, shine, mind
/oe/ road, blow, bone, cold
/ue/ moon, blue, grew, tune
/oo / look, would, put
/ar/ cart, fast (regional)
/ur/ burn, first, term
/or/ torn, door, warn (regional)
/au/ haul, law, call
/er/ circus, sister
/ow/ down, shout
/oi/ coin, boy
/air/ stairs, bear, hare
/ear/ fear, beer, here
Consonant phonemes and representative words
/b/ baby
/d/ dog
/f/ field, photo
/g/ game
/h/ hat
/j/ judge, giant, barge
/k/ cook, quick, mix, Chris
/l/ lamb
/m/ monkey, comb
/n/ nut, knife, gnat
/p/ paper
/r/ rabbit, wrong
/s/ sun, mouse, city, science
/t/ tap
/v/ van
/w/ was
/wh/ where (regional)
/y/ yes
/z/ zebra, please, is
/th/ then
/th/ thin
/ch/ chip, watch
/sh/ ship, mission, chef
/zh/ treasure
/ng/ ring, sink
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Typical New Labour: one person of influemce comes up with a bit of research that proves their’s is the best method, it’s picked up by the people at the top and suddenly everybody is going round repeating the mantra “synthetic phonics is the way, the truth and the light”. If only sorting out the nation’s education system was so simple!