VCV vs. VCE / VCI / VCY to determine if vowel should be long

Language English Grammar & Usage
1

At my new school, we teach this rule: when you see vowel consonant vowel, the first vowel should be pronounced long.

However, I always used to teach it this way: VCE, VCI, or VCY makes the first vowel long. (Phonics From A-Z seems to agree with me on this.)

I’ve flipped through the dictionary, and it seems to me there are fewer instances where the first rule seems to apply:
behave (a makes e long?)
popular (u doesn’t make o long)
conspiracy (a doesn’t make i long)
monument (u doesn’t make o long)

There seem to be a lot of VCE, VCI, or VCY examples where the rule works:
broken
spacy
Irene
mediation

And note these examples:
document (e makes u long, but u doesn’t make o long)
inspire (e makes i long) vs. inspiration (a doesn’t make i long)

Then again, there are plenty of exceptions to my rule too:
meditation (i doesn’t make e long)
velocity (y doesn’t make i long)
have, give, live (I’m sure these last few are the kind of “very common word” exceptions that exist in many languages.)

Anyone have any hard data on this?

2

Your example of “inspire” vs. “inspiration” is pretty convincing. On the other hand, this example doesn’t fit as well.

“conspiracy” - The “ir” in this word is a long “e” + “r” sound. I.e., it sounds like consp + EER + shwa +cy

There are numerous counter examples that support the school’s rule, too:

domain, donate, donor, polar, molar, solar, robot, vocal, local, soda, sofa, sojourn, etc… each have a long “o”
debate, delay, demand, depart, detain (but not detention!), remain, bemoan, rebuke, revolve, lemur, etc… each have a long “e”
bipolar, bison, dipole, dynamic, dynamo, dynamite, pilot, pirate, sinus, tidal, etc… all have a long “i”

Then again, while all of the examples above support the school’s rule, those below break both your rule and the school’s rule:

celery, celibate, ceremony, diligent, ever, livid, living, never, serene, seven, sever, several, telegraph, telephone, telepathy, telescope, temerity, where, whence, vegitarian, velocity, veranda, zenith

Personally, I think that phonics rules are good in that they get kids thinking about the actual sounds they’re making. Both the vowel+consonnant+e/i/y rule or the vowel+consonnant+vowel rule are right more often than not. Thinking about phonics will make them distinguish between sounds that they might otherwise lump together. Unless you use different phonics rules for words with Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots, there will be exceptions. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, though! Having the kids listen to new vocab words on their CDs and look for phonics exceptions is great training for their ears.

3

Hehe thanks for your input Xiaoma.

I wonder which way people are teaching it at other schools (that bother with spelling rules – God knows Kojen never did!) Would be nice to have a percentage of accuracy comparison between the two rules.

The reason I care is just that I’d like to know which one is actually more likely to help students spell / pronounce words correctly, as opposed to creating more apparent exceptions which might cause kids to just disregard spelling rules completely.

A few other examples that seem to lend credence to the VCV rule are in this very post:
‘apparent’ & ‘accuracy’ (double consonant to “protect” a from becoming long), ‘opposed’ (same deal).

4

[quote=“Xiaoma”]Your example of “inspire” vs. “inspiration” is pretty convincing. On the other hand, this example doesn’t fit as well.

“conspiracy” - The “ir” in this word is a long “e” + “r” sound. I.e., it sounds like consp + EER + shwa +cy[/quote]
Those rules are only supposed to apply to simple vowels. “ir” is not an “i” followed by an “r”, the two symbols are read together, like “au”, “oo”, “ai” “ou” “ow”, etc. None of these sounds follow those rules and are far less often affected by other vowels.

[quote]There are numerous counter examples that support the school’s rule, too:

domain, donate, donor, polar, molar, solar, robot, vocal, local, soda, sofa, sojourn, etc… each have a long “o”
debate, delay, demand, depart, detain (but not detention!), remain, bemoan, rebuke, revolve, lemur, etc… each have a long “e”
bipolar, bison, dipole, dynamic, dynamo, dynamite, pilot, pirate, sinus, tidal, etc… all have a long “i”

Then again, while all of the examples above support the school’s rule,[/quote]
Actually, these phonetic rules are intended to be interpreted within the same syllable. When you go beyond a single syllable, things get much more complicated. You start having to deal with word formation and morpheme boundaries.

Don’t forget that phonics “rules” aren’t really rules at all. They are really generalized descriptions of how the language is used. The more regular a rule, and the fewer exceptions it has, the more useful it is to students. Complex rules that try and formulate an answer and have many exceptions are less useful.

I think trying to figure out which rule is simpler and has fewer exceptions is a good thing.

I’d go with VCE, VCI, VCY and teach kids to break words longer words down into syllables before trying to apply any such rules.

5

[quote=“Vay”]A few other examples that seem to lend credence to the VCV rule are in this very post:
‘apparent’ & ‘accuracy’ (double consonant to “protect” a from becoming long), ‘opposed’ (same deal).[/quote]
Yes, the double consonant prevents the vowel from becoming long, but not because of the following vowel. Vowels in the initial position of a word that form an isolated syllable are pronounced long. By adding the consonant, the vowel is no longer alone and so is no longer pronounced long.

6

[quote=“R. Daneel Olivaw”][quote]There are numerous counter examples that support the school’s rule, too:

domain, donate, donor, polar, molar, solar, robot, vocal, local, soda, sofa, sojourn, etc… each have a long “o”
debate, delay, demand, depart, detain (but not detention!), remain, bemoan, rebuke, revolve, lemur, etc… each have a long “e”
bipolar, bison, dipole, dynamic, dynamo, dynamite, pilot, pirate, sinus, tidal, etc… all have a long “i”

Then again, while all of the examples above support the school’s rule,[/quote]
Actually, these phonetic rules are intended to be interpreted within the same syllable. When you go beyond a single syllable, things get much more complicated.[/quote]Right. I’d say that the so-called “long vowel sound” (not actually a long vowel but lets not go into that now) in the above examples is so because of the open syllable rule, not because of anything in the following syllable. Though the “o” in domain actually has a schwa sound, and the supposed long “e” examples except for lemur have an /I/ (“short i”) sound, at least the way I say them. [Edit: just checked the Cobuild dictionary and it agrees, e.g. “debate” is /dI’beIt].

[quote=“R. Daneel Olivaw”]Don’t forget that phonics “rules” aren’t really rules at all. They are really generalized descriptions of how the language is used. The more regular a rule, and the fewer exceptions it has, the more useful it is to students. Complex rules that try and formulate an answer and have many exceptions are less useful.[/quote]I absolutely agree. And phonics is just one part of successful reading.

7

The rules of Long and Short apply only to syllables. In stressed syllables VCE is long, V is long, CV is long, and the first in a VV combination is often long and the second silent, VC is short. Unstressed syllables are usually pronounced schwa. That is the basics and about all you should teach under the heading of Long and Short Vowels. The other stuff you mentioned is too complicated and too exception laden to ever be useful. Actually the other stuff is probably just wrong, and therefore not great teaching material, teaching is funny that way.

8

[quote]Yes, the double consonant prevents the vowel from becoming long, but not because of the following vowel. Vowels in the initial position of a word that form an isolated syllable are pronounced long. By adding the consonant, the vowel is no longer alone and so is no longer pronounced long.
[/quote]

Did not know that! Also didn’t realize that the ‘rule’ for long vowels is only supposed to apply within the same syllable. Damn, why can’t some sensibly-spelled language like Italian be the lingua franca of this century! Anyway, thanks for the tips!

9

R. Daneel Olivaw wrote:[quote]
Xiaoma wrote:[quote]
Your example of “inspire” vs. “inspiration” is pretty convincing. On the other hand, this example doesn’t fit as well.

“conspiracy” - The “ir” in this word is a long “e” + “r” sound. I.e., it sounds like consp + EER + shwa +cy

Those rules are only supposed to apply to simple vowels. “ir” is not an “i” followed by an “r”, the two symbols are read together, like “au”, “oo”, “ai” “ou” “ow”, etc. None of these sounds follow those rules and are far less often affected by other vowels.

There are numerous counter examples that support the school’s rule, too:

domain, donate, donor, polar, molar, solar, robot, vocal, local, soda, sofa, sojourn, etc… each have a long “o”
debate, delay, demand, depart, detain (but not detention!), remain, bemoan, rebuke, revolve, lemur, etc… each have a long “e”
bipolar, bison, dipole, dynamic, dynamo, dynamite, pilot, pirate, sinus, tidal, etc… all have a long “i”

Then again, while all of the examples above support the school’s rule,
[/quote]
Actually, these phonetic rules are intended to be interpreted within the same syllable. When you go beyond a single syllable, things get much more complicated. You start having to deal with word formation and morpheme boundaries.

Don’t forget that phonics “rules” aren’t really rules at all. They are really generalized descriptions of how the language is used. The more regular a rule, and the fewer exceptions it has, the more useful it is to students. Complex rules that try and formulate an answer and have many exceptions are less useful.

I think trying to figure out which rule is simpler and has fewer exceptions is a good thing.

I’d go with VCE, VCI, VCY and teach kids to break words longer words down into syllables before trying to apply any such rules.[/quote]

Actually, the phonics rules at his school do apply across syllables. For example, consider the short “i” in “bitter” as opposed to the long “i” in “biter”, or the short “o” in “hopping” as opposed to the long one in “hoping”. I know because I used to work there. I can also say that on the whole, I found that kids improved their pronunciation more at that school than kids at any other schools I’ve seen. That’s saying something because I’ve taught literally thousands of kids here. You might be interested in seeing a spelling drill one of my classes did. I put a video of it up on my blog http://toshuo.com/2006/a-spelling-drill/. That class had started with ABC’s and had only been studying for five months at the time of the video.

As for “ir” and other consonant + “r” clusters, they DO become long. In cases of short vowels, “ir”, “er” and “ur” all have the same sounds (as in bird, germ, and burn). “ar” has its own sound, as does “or”. However, LONG vowels + “r” have different sounds. Consider “her” (short e+r), vs. “here” (long e+r), “hear” (long e+r) and “peer” (long e+r), or “far” (short a+r) vs “fair” and “fare”) (long a+r). Only “or” remains unchanged when the “o” is long- “or”, “ore”, and “oar” have the same sound.

The word, “inspire” does indeed follow this pattern, as do “sir” and “sire”.

Joesax, I think it depends on how you stress your words. If the first syllable of “demand” or “debate” is unstressed it will become a shwa, which for American speakers probably sounds like a short “i” or a short “u”. Do you say those words the same way when you’re emphasizing them?

10

Here’s one more quick question. For those of you that say these rules are only to be applied within a single syllable, what words have vowel+consonant+i or vowel+consonant+y in the same syllable?

11

[quote=“Xiaoma”]Joesax, I think it depends on how you stress your words. If the first syllable of “demand” or “debate” is unstressed it will become a shwa, which for American speakers probably sounds like a short “i” or a short “u”. Do you say those words the same way when you’re emphasizing them?[/quote]Have you ever heard anyone saying “DEEmand”? I haven’t. Not saying that it doesn’t happen, just that I haven’t heard it.

The “short i” (whether stressed or unstressed) is a different phoneme from the schwa, at least in British English. I imagine it’s the same in American English, though I don’t have any Am. Eng. phonemic charts handy.

12

But it isn’t as cut and dried as that. There are word formation rules that interfere with the simplicity of the rule and create numerous exceptions.

Take bit/bite. That’s fairly simple.
Now when you have “biter” you’re just taking an existing word and adding the suffix “-r” to form a new word. Our spelling conventions work in most cases to preserve the pronunciation of the root word.

Hope/hop. Again, farily simple.
When you add a suffix to them “-ing” or “-er” the spelling rules act to preserve the pronunciation of the root word and to reduce ambiguity.

You gave the examples: ce-ler-y, di-li-gent, ev-er, li-vid, te-le-scope, te-mer-i-ty

These syllables are not each separate discreet morphemes. You aren’t taking “cel” or “cele” and adding “ery” to make a new word. So, each syllable stands on its own.

Like I said, when you get into the word formation process, things get much more complex and confusing. VCE will still work sometimes, but not always.

I saw the video. I would be more interested in seeing a class where you taught the rules rather than went around the room asking kids to spell some words. The kids had certainly been taught pronunciation from a native Taiwanese teacher at some point previous to coming to your class— you can tell by how they droned on with the trailing letters. Seemed like a mixed bag of a class and difficult to see from that particular video the efficacy of your system.

If you want to show off a system, I’d suggest using 3 videos on a single class you bring up from having ridiculously bad pronunciation to good pronunciation. Video 1 of an initial assessment of the class showing all their weaknesses, Video 2 of an example class where you are teaching them with the effective system, and Video 3 of an assessment after they have improved.

True, but they are not the same as an “i” + “r”, “a” + “r”, etc. They have unique rules and are often counter-examples to your school’s spelling rules.

You said:[quote]On the other hand, this example doesn’t fit as well.
“conspiracy” - The “ir” in this word is a long “e” + “r” sound. I.e., it sounds like consp + EER + shwa +cy[/quote]
You aren’t dealing with short “i” plus “r”. You have to see the two together as a single symbol and they don’t match up with the pronunciation of a short “i” sound. “ir” can sound like “ear” or “er” or “ire”.
Conspire/conspiracy
The first one is the “long” version of the “i” because of VCE, while in the second it is the “ear” sound (not the long “i”) when it is followed by another vowel.

It does fit as a nice counter-example to the VCV rule. A better rule would be VCE/VCI/VCY, and apply it on the syllable level.

13

The rules “at his school” apply across syllables? Has English entered a parrallel universe there then or what exactly?

The “i” in biter is long because it is the last letter in a stressed syllable. The “o” in hoping is long for the same reason.

14

R. Daneel Olivaw wrote:

[quote]I saw the video. I would be more interested in seeing a class where you taught the rules rather than went around the room asking kids to spell some words. The kids had certainly been taught pronunciation from a native Taiwanese teacher at some point previous to coming to your class— you can tell by how they droned on with the trailing letters. Seemed like a mixed bag of a class and difficult to see from that particular video the efficacy of your system.

If you want to show off a system, I’d suggest using 3 videos on a single class you bring up from having ridiculously bad pronunciation to good pronunciation. Video 1 of an initial assessment of the class showing all their weaknesses, Video 2 of an example class where you are teaching them with the effective system, and Video 3 of an assessment after they have improved. [/quote]

Daneel, I agree. It would be nicer if I had more videos. Unfortunately, the only video I have is from the one day a teacher from Taizhong came up and filmed us on his cell phone. One thing I can say, though, is that on the first day, I did a spelling drill with no vowels except for A and E, and more than 3/4 of the class answered wrong. As for learning from a Taiwanese teacher, some students had, but some of the younger ones hadn’t. I suppose they’ve all at least heard some English on TV before, though. Anyway, I don’t really feel the need to show off the system. I know from a great deal of personal experience how well it works compared to numerous others I’ve worked with. If you’re really interested, I could get a hold of some old tapes from those students, or see if my old boss will let you film some videos of the same students now that they’ve studied for nearly a year.

BTW, I think you misunderstood what I wrote about the “r” sounds, Daneel. In general “ir”, “er”, and “ur” are the same. It’s only with long vowels (i.e. “ire”, “eer”, “ear”, and “ure”) that you’ll hear the whole vowel before the “r”.

bob wrote:

Chill out, dude. It’s not a parallel universe. It’s just a different system of analyzing the same language. Just as with the system you use, there are a mess of exceptions. That doesn’t mean that either are “wrong”, or “useless”.

15

Not sure, Bob. I’m no linguist, but it seems like you’re getting into semantics here. The “i” in “bitter” isn’t the last letter in a stressed syllable because we doubled the “t”, which we could’ve gotten to the same way by using a manner of speaking more readily understandable by most kids, IE the whole VCE/I/Y vs. VCCE/I/Y distinction. Can you give us an example of a similar pair of words with the same vowel/consonant construction where the first syllable isn’t stressed and thus the first vowel isn’t long?

On the other hand, Xiaoma, the words you’ve chosen as evidence for the VCV rule seem to mostly be words containing prefixes with “predetermined” long-vowel pronunciations (re, pre, pro, do). I don’t think it’s the second vowel that’s “making” the first vowel long in those cases.

However, what rule is “making” something be spelled or pronounced a certain way is pretty irrelevant. What I want to know is, which generalization best accurately reflects the reality of the most English words, and thus can best be expected to actually help kids spell/pronounce more accurately?

16

It’s pretty clear that the rule should be VCe. I wouldn’t even add the VCi, VCy since that mostly only holds true when they replace an “e” during word formation. I’d teach ay, ai, ei, oy, oi, etc. separately.

Here’s a way you can see for yourself that VCV isn’t really a valid rule: Go to http://www.onelook.com and do a search using wildcards. Search for aba, ada, ata, abe, ade, ate, abi, adi, ado, eda, etc. etc. (Of course you don’t have to do a comprehensive search, just randomly pick a couple letters for each vowel) Make sure you click on the “Common Words Only” link at the top of the search to get more useful results. Scan through the words and sound them out.

You will find words that seem to fit the VCV rule, but you will find many that do not. You will find a few that are exceptions to the VCe rule, but far and away the majority will follow VCe. You will find words that follow the VCi, VCy rules, but these are pretty much all where there is an “e” being replaced from a root word.

The results for me were conclusive. The only rule that is simple enough and has few enough exceptions that it should be taught to students is VCe, and perhaps point out that when an “e” is replaced by an “i” or “y” that the base sound doesn’t change.

See for yourself and judge for yourself.

17

I’ve also read that the ‘vowel-consonant-vowel’ rule doesn’t cross over syllables. The reason the “o” in “donate” and the “a” in “paper” are long is because when a syllable has only one vowel and ends in that vowel, the vowel is long. Of course it doesn’t work for everything (e.g. “do”)

u/nit pa/per do/nate sta/tion mo/tion o/pen

It does seem the words do have a “VCV” pattern anyway and it’s probably easier to explain.

18

[quote=“Nicya”]u/nit pa/per do/nate sta/tion mo/tion o/pen

It does seem the words do have a “VCV” pattern anyway and it’s probably easier to explain.[/quote]
The problem isn’t that sometimes there are instances where in “VCV” patterns the first vowel is long. The problem is that in too many “VCV” patterns the first vowel is not long. This makes it a bad generalization because it is not all that general of a description.

Something being easier to explain does not make it right. VCV as a rule of thumb would be ok, but it isn’t a very reliable rule of thumb, so I would suggest discarding it. It was a nice idea to try and simplify things further, but it turns out to be an oversimplification.

19

I agree. I feel it’s kind of hard to get really in depth with a 9-year-old and it works for awhile when learning the basics, but after that it kind of goes out the window.

20

I’ve never had a problem teaching phonics for reading… but how on earth do you teach kids to tell the difference when writing between say “a-e” and “ai”?? For example: “main” and “mane”…???