Do you snarl when you say snivel, snout, snoot, snub, snot, snob or snotty? Do you feel a certain sensation or emotion when you say sneer, sneeze, snoop? Maybe you curl your lip or say them with your teeth close together. Did you notice that words that have meaning related to the mouth or nose can start with the same two letters like the <sn> in snore. These letter strings that coincide with feelings and sounds are called phonesthemes which is derived from Greek φωνή phone, “sound”, and αἴσθημα aisthema, “perception” from αίσθάνομαι aisthanomai, “I perceive”.
Category Archives: Orthography
Are you Schwaducated? Take this Quiz to Find Out
It is not uncommon to sweep the schwa under the rug or give it a cursory nod in a short lesson and then move on. Instead many instructors choose to over-pronounce a word and avoid the schwa altogether. Think about this, the schwa is the most common utterance in the English language, and it deserves to be understood. Here is a quiz for you to become schwaducated and when you are done, you can peruse the answers to learn more about the schwa. Continue reading
Misspelled Word(s) of the Day – Day 4 – Every and Family
Reminder: The purpose of Misspelled Word of the Day is not to try to make everyone a perfect speller, the purpose is to learn from misspellings and then teach the student the misspelled word of the day while instilling an understanding of written language in general. The intention is not to teach students to spell every word in the English language, of which there are more than one million, the intention is to teach the student to think about words differently and learn to question, and understand word structure.
Misspelled Word of the Day – Day 3: growth
Reminder: The purpose of Misspelled Word of the Day is not to try to make everyone a perfect speller, the purpose is to learn from misspellings and then teach the student the misspelled word of the day while instilling an understanding of written language in general. The intention is not to teach students to spell every word in the English language, of which there are more than one million, the intention is to teach the student to think about words differently and learn to question, and understand word structure.