One of those rascals would always, without warning, change its behavior right in the middle of a sentence!

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils

In full disclosure, let me say right off the bat that today’s column is technically not about grammar, not completely, anyway. However, it is about words, without which, by the way, there would be no grammar. Therefore, I am claiming license to veer a bit.

I’ve been tutoring a little kid who’s having some difficulty in reading, and I’m facing a problem that has raised my angst for quite some time. The poor kid depends on “sounding out” the letters in the word to “sound out” the word.

Well, now, if you’ve had even a little bit of history with words, you know how that goes! Now, think back to your days of tackling words. They gave you, to use my mother’s words, the ang-bang! They never quite did with “unveering regularity” what they professed to do on that innocent white sheet of paper! One of those rascals would always, without warning, change its behavior right in the middle of a sentence! It doesn’t take a genius… and at an early age, you weren’t one… to figure that the fault, dear reader, was not your own!

Well, now, how can one master grammar when the words are all screwed up? And to toss you another question, why are the words so messed up? In short, it is because, no matter how we wrinkle our noses and “uglify” our brows, to tell the truth, we, the greatest group since sliced bread, darn near don’t have our own words! We “Americans” have stolen and borrowed so much and so frequently that practically nothing is left without the serial number scraped off. Consider the holiday we just celebrated while “our finest and bravest” assault the authentic natives who don’t want a pipe to go under their water, which is ridiculous since oil pipes don’t break and spill their black contents all over, or under, the place. In fact, only a dozen or so have happened in North America in the past two years. Heck, that’s equal to a whole spill-free month per two-month cycle! Sorry. Where was I...? Oh, tutoring…

As I was saying, this cute little kid is trying his darnedest to master a skill he’ll need for the rest of his life – reading – and the letters are getting in the way! When he “sounds out” the letters, they don’t make sense! The sounds, like oil, won’t stay in their places. He sees draw, and begins to “sound it out,” just like he’s being taught. He follows the rule: Da, as in “day,” ruh, as in ring, ai as in at, and wuh, as in we… all the sounds those letters made a few pages earlier!

I feel like such a grinch when I tell him that that D is J, that R is married to the J, which is nowhere to be found, A is more like short O, and W is just hanging around causing trouble for A!

Why can’t we just toss all those “explanations” that confuse children who really, really want to read, but the sounds beep turning flips on them? I feel like a traitor when I look into those trusting eyes, eyes that beg me to make the letters make sense.

Is it any wonder that our little ones squirm so much when they try to read? They don’t squirm half as much as those darn borrowed sounds do!

Story Posted:12/02/2016