Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

English Language Educational Games; How On Earth Do You Pronounce This?

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

English is one of the more complex languages to learn, and a significant reason given by some educationalists as why we struggle in primary and secondary school performance. Are they right?

I recall the word developed by William Ollier (born 1824), sometimes attributed to George Bernard Shaw that revealed the games that can be played with the perverse nature of English pronunciation. The word Mr Ollier compiled is ghoti and is pronounced “fish.” Here’s his reasoning:

  • The sound for the letter F are taken from the word cough
  • The I is stolen from women
  • The sound for the letters SH comes from the ti in the word station.

It doesn’t stop there. One of the best quips I recall is the sentence that demonstrates the English games that can be played with the letters “ough”

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough: after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed. Nine different ways to pronounce “ough” in one sentence. Ah what delights that can be played in English language educational games. Perhaps this is the true value of English.

Hieroglyphics Try To Invade the Keen2learn Site

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Sounding like aliens from outer space in a Star Wars script , these strange beasts have partly invaded keen2learn, playing games in the use of the English language Our  tecky guy tried to give a sensible explanation  but as the conversation developed he become ever more scary, making as much sense as a typical hieroglyphic as you can imagine. Is he one of them? The short answer is when we upgraded the site recently the Wordpress used in the blog changed every apostrophe to appear as *Aftm”. Think we’ve ( just testing there) annihilated the little blighter’s but if you spot one do let us know. Could make this into a competition

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