Pet Peeve with KK/phonics in Taiwan

[puiwaihin]

@smithsgj

pwh the two vowels in “pity” are not the same (what sounds are, in different contexts, after all?) but they are (a) probably the same phoneme and (b) close enough for me, and probably close enough for the learners you describe. Certainly the “-y” is more like the second vowel in “pitiful” than the one in “please”.

I don’t see how you can claim they are the same phoneme. Were they allophones of the same phoneme you couldn’t find a minimal pair with the two.
[pIt] a hole you can fall into
[pit] a name for a boy

So, in English [I] and [i] are not the same.

And to me the "-y’ is certainly not more like the second vowel in “pitiful”. The second vowel in “pitiful” would either be pronounced as a short “i” in careful speech or as a “schwa” in most common speech. That does not at all match standard pronunciation of the final syllable in “pity”, which in a standard pronunciation would be a long “e” sound.

Forgive me for not using IPA or KK symbols in all cases since I don’t have a font installed that can display all the symbols in my web browser.

[quote]That was what the OP asked, and that is the answer.

“Monday” is a case of vowel reduction. There’s a trend here too: nobody reduces the vowel any more! [/quote]
Oh, there really are people who say, “I’ll git back ta ya on Mundee.” But that is not a standard pronunciation. Standard pronunciation is a long “a” sound at the end. The KK in their dictionaries reflects a non-standard pronunciation.

Of course it doesn’t actually matter a hoot because the Taiwanese, like the “illegals” in Arizona, don’t distinguish between /i/ and /I/ in their accent of English. That’s nothing to do with KK, it’s just that there’s only the one vowel in Chinese (and Spanish).

Only if they aren’t properly taught. Students in my classes can and do distinguish between [i] and [I]. Actually, the difficulty for them is more of differentiating short “e” and short “i”.

The deficiencies of KK are to do with internal consistency, and the fact that it presents a phonemic inventory that is not representative of the English that any native speaker on the planet actually speaks

That I agree with. The more important of the two is the lack of internal consistency, leaving students having to memorize KK spellings instead of being able to produce them from the pronunciation of the word.

I’d like to know more about the “implementation errors” you speak of. In what sense is KK being used as a second spelling, if that is the main or sole implementation error?

I’m sure there are some schools and some teachers that use KK to show how words are said. But none that I’ve seen. Instead, children are taught a word, given the Chinese and the KK spellings, and told to memorize it. When they are tested they have to reproduce the KK as it is in their dictionary. But they don’t really use the KK to figure out how to pronounce the word. They use how the teacher models the word to pronounce it irrespective of the KK.

The dictionaries they use have a mix-match of dialects and registers for their pronunciation. Some words will be transcribed as they would be pronounced in careful, educated speech, while others use one variant or other of casual speech. Yet, the KK in their dictionaries is sacred. Mostly because that is how they will be tested.

KK in dictionaries should reflect educated pronunciation of a Standard North American dialect (since North American is what has been chosen in Taiwan). Each symbol in KK should have one and only one pronunciation.

(I’ve never taught kids, as you’ve probably gathered) Do you mean that the kids can use it as an alternative script when writing, as they seem to be allowed to do with zhuyin fuhao if they don’t know a character?

No. It means they must learn how to write the KK for their tests. Kids in upper level classes do actually learn what each symbol means, but very few actually use it as a guide for the pronunciation.

And Phonics? Isn’t that a form of weird spelling too? (Like you write “kar” for “car” or something, right?) But that is never actually used as a alternative spelling?

I’m not sure what you’re asking here. I was probably loose in my terminology which lead to the confusion.

So what else can they use, apart from KK?

I don’t object to the symbols chosen for KK, except that I would have liked it if they hadn’t diverged from the use of dipthongs and merged them into a single symbol. KK, with a little reform, would serve well. I even see it as a nice bonus for anyone who wants to move into linguistics and learn IPA.

It’s not KK. It’s not the attitude towards KK or the implementation of it, really. It’s the way they do education here; instead of learners learning and teachers teaching, we have learners memorizing and parroting, and teachers giving tests.

But KK and the attitude towards it is part of the problem. Something could be done to fix it, and then I would really like KK in Taiwan.

[bababa]

@smithsgj

I’d like to know more about the “implementation errors” you speak of. In what sense is KK being used as a second spelling, if that is the main or sole implementation error? (I’ve never taught kids, as you’ve probably gathered) Do you mean that the kids can use it as an alternative script when writing, as they seem to be allowed to do with zhuyin fuhao if they don’t know a character?

At our buxiban the kids had to memorize the KK forms of the vocabulary we taught. They were tested by having to write the KK symbols for the words they had memorized. They were never expected to be able to use KK to figure out how to pronounce a new word. In fact they could and did get 100% on KK tests without knowing how to pronounce the words very well.
Because KK is used this way, I feel that it is just a waste of time to teach it to children. It’s not helping them figure out how to pronounce new words; it’s just giving them more things to memorize.

[smithsgj]

@puiwaihin

[quote=“smithsgj”]pwh the two vowels in “pity” are not the same (what sounds are, in different contexts, after all?) but they are (a) probably the same phoneme and (b) close enough for me, and probably close enough for the learners you describe. Certainly the “-y” is more like the second vowel in “pitiful” than the one in “please”.

I don’t see how you can claim they are the same phoneme. Were they allophones of the same phoneme you couldn’t find a minimal pair with the two.
[pIt] a hole you can fall into
[pit] a name for a boy

So, in English [I] and [i] are not the same.
[/quote]

Well for Pit’s sake, of course not! I’m saying that the two vowels in “pity” are, or could be interpreted as the same phoneme. There’s no minimal pair /pItI/ vs /pIti:/ is there?

@puiwaihin

And to me the "-y’ is certainly not more like the second vowel in “pitiful”. The second vowel in “pitiful” would either be pronounced as a short “i” in careful speech or as a “schwa” in most common speech. That does not at all match standard pronunciation of the final syllable in “pity”, which in a standard pronunciation would be a long “e” sound.

I’d pronounce the second vowels in both “pitiful” and “pity for him” in the same way, I think: like you say short “i” ie [I]. ymmv.

[quote=“bababa”]At our buxiban the kids had to memorize the KK forms of the vocabulary we taught. They were tested by having to write the KK symbols for the words they had memorized. They were never expected to be able to use KK to figure out how to pronounce a new word. In fact they could and did get 100% on KK tests without knowing how to pronounce the words very well.
Because KK is used this way, I feel that it is just a waste of time to teach it to children. It’s not helping them figure out how to pronounce new words; it’s just giving them more things to memorize.[/quote]

Well. If that’s how it’s used, I can see what you’re all peeved about. What an absolute farce.

[/quote]

[ironlady]

I’d suggest that y’all stop mixing systems…that is, either talk about phonemes and allophones (using standard linguistic terminology), talk about KK segments (who knows where those come from ) or talk about “long” and “short” vowels as used to teach English reading to children in the US.

If you keep mixing these ideas together, you’re sure to confuse each other and yourselves.

BTW, the definition of a “phoneme” is no minimal pairs ANYWHERE in the language, so unfortunately you can’t take an individual word and claim that because you can still understand it no matter which sound you pronounce, therefore the two sounds belong to the same phoneme. English is nice in this way because it’s often multi-syllabic – the words are “tougher”, I think, as there are more correct segments to pull you through even if you pronounce one of them wrong. I think this is one reason why Chinese pronunciation is difficult for us-- the words are shorter to begin with, so each segmental mistake counts for more, leading us unavoidably down the garden path to total unintelligibility.

[puiwaihin]

@smithsgj

Well for Pit’s sake, of course not! I’m saying that the two vowels in “pity” are, or could be interpreted as the same phoneme. There’s no minimal pair /pItI/ vs /pIti:/ is there?

I believe you mean that they are allomorphs of the same morpheme?
sil.org/linguistics/Glossary … omorph.htm

I’d say you would have a case for that. But that’s irrelevant to the discussion of KK writing two different phonemes [i] and [I] (IPA) with the same symbol.

@smithsgj

I’d pronounce the second vowels in both “pitiful” and “pity for him” in the same way, I think: like you say short “i” ie [I].

Perhaps you do, but that would not be standard North American English. I don’t think that is standard for the Queen’s English, either.

Well. If that’s how it’s used, I can see what you’re all peeved about. What an absolute farce.

Indeed.

[puiwaihin]

@ironlady

I’d suggest that y’all stop mixing systems…that is, either talk about phonemes and allophones (using standard linguistic terminology), talk about KK segments (who knows where those come from ) or talk about “long” and “short” vowels as used to teach English reading to children in the US.

Unfortunately, we’re dealing with two different sets of symbols (KK and IPA) which have different values for the symbols. [I] in KK may not mean the same as it does in IPA-- which is at the heart of the discussion. I reverted to using the terms “short I” and “long e” because I felt they would be less ambiguous. But you’re right, I may have added to the confusion.

But then, “Front close tense un-rounded”, “Front near-close lax unrounded”, and “Near-front close-mid tense unrounded” are somewhat unwieldy.

So, to keep things easy and to avoid any potential confusion with IPA and KK symbols, let’s define “short i” as the sound corresponding to [I] according to IPA (ie. Front near-close lax unrounded), “long I” as the sound corresponding to the dipthong [ai] in IPA and “long e” as the sound corresponding to [i] in IPA.