--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Marco Cimarosti
<marco.cimarosti@...> wrote:

> I wrote:
> > suzmccarth wrote:
> > > So the phonetic analysis required to use the alphabet has
>to
> > > be learned in school? That is what I also believe.
> >
> > Suzanne!? You're joking, right?
>
> Sorry, I didn't mean to be harsh, or even less so enigmatic.

Not harsh but enigmatic.

>It is just it
> this sounded so obvious to me that the kind of analysis
>required by
> alphabetic writing is all but natural or intuitive.

Are you saying that it *is* intuitive and natural but
'pre-school-age' son cannot do it? He should spend more time
playing soccer and put off reading until later. :-)

There does seem to be a wide range of natural skill that varies
by individual, somewhat like being musical. However, most of
us who learn to read with an alphabet, learn as we associate
sound with visual image, and either at home or in school, in play
or didactic situation, learn to combine and segment sounds with
the support of the visual images of the discrete letters.

There are cases of societies where alphabetic literacy was
taught at home and there are also some children who learn to
read without instruction. However, they still learn to segment
sound because it is represented in visual form not just
phonologically.

Actually some researchers believe that many English readers do
not learn to segment syllables very well because it is so much
more efficient to read in English by recognizing larger chunks
like onset and rime.

Anyway it all breaks down to whether someone can use a roman
orthography to input a syllabic writing system without first
consciously learning alphabetic literacy. Porbably some can and
some can't. What do you think?

Suzanne

>
> But, probably, that's seems so obvious to me only because I

am witnessing

> how pre-school-age son is unable to perform the (seemingly)

easy task of

> splitting, e.g., [ba] in [b] + [a]. He knows all the letters, he can

tell

> each letter's sound, he can segment a word in syllables, but

he just can't

> get the notion that a syllables can be further split into "smaller"
> segments, or, seeing it from the reading side, that adjacent

letters can

> "merge" into a single syllable sound.
>
> > --
> > Cingar
>
> Ooops!, I should be more careful with my "secret" identities! :-)
>
> --
> Marco