When Angel and Apple started learning English alphabets and 2-3 letter words in school last year, I was pretty miffed that here in India, the language is not taught phonetically as it is done in the US.
The thought at the back of my mind, was that I was not taught it phonetically either, than how did I manage to get the nuances of the (non) phonetic style of this popular language. The final piece of this puzzle clicked into place when I saw my kids start Hindi (this year). As they started learning the Hindi alphabets and sounds, they automatically extrapolated it to the English ones too, and I think that is what we all who can speak multiple languages do. Not to mention the sounds are much more varied in Indian languages as we have more number of letters and so are easy to pick up and differentiate.
Based on this Hindi knowledge, If I ask them to spell an unknown word, they are not too far off. For example, when I asked them to spell 'Night' the very first time they went 'nite'.
This post was inspired by Chox's post.
2 comments:
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I think even if they are not taught phonetically, they instinctively know how to spell like that. My fellow hasn.t started Hindi yet but does similar stuff.
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