[/caption]Remember when you were learning to read and you were told to sound out words that were new to you? Great advice, unless it is a word that has some strange rule on pronunciation. Then, when the poor reader tries to use the word in the real world, it leads to embarrassment.
I was sitting in a Bible Class one Sunday when the guy leading the discussion began reading a passage in Psalms that contained the word "bough". Only thing is, the poor schmuck was saying "bo" instead. It was almost amusing until I thought about what words I had a habit of mispronouncing.
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[/caption]A celebrity reader, Garrison Keillor, has a tale about going to a museum as a kid and visiting his old buddy, Gippy the mummy. He made the mistake of sounding out the word Egyptian and came up with "E-Gip-T-Ian", Now when I come across the word, I have a tendency to pronounce it the same way.
I mentioned that I have some words that cause me trouble. One such word is "subtle". I didn't know until recently that you weren't supposed to pronounce the "B". Used to drive my friends nuts. Another word that I used to mispronounce and many others do as well, is "wash". I've looked and looked and I still can't find the "R" in the word. My mother still says "warsh". Bring on the chalkboard and the fingernails.
So, go ahead and encourage readers to sound out words. But please, for the love of Mike, help them with those odd words that have special rules. The English language is hard enough as it is without allowing readers to muck it up even further.
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