The New York Times is publicly using generative AI, but responsibly: "We should tell readers how our work was created and, if we make substantial use of generative A.I., explain how we mitigate risks, such as bias or inaccuracy, with human oversight." https://www.nytco.com/press/principles-for-using-generative-...
OKFN and OKF are the same thing: "Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data [--] founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 [--] Between May 2016 and May 2019 the organisation was named Open Knowledge International"
Practical pedagogy is called didactics and primary school teachers (should) learn a lot of it: after all, a child's brain is still quite undeveloped and you cannot teach them like you would teach a peer or yourself. E.g. you cannot teach grammar rules but you can teach a foreign language through singing, learning games etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didactic_method
These approaches work for most children most of the time, but when they don't, you have special education teachers who have a different degree in diagnosing (debugging) learning difficulties big and small as well as implementing interventions etc. The service they provide is also called remedial education [and it's especially cool when a primary school teacher and a special education teacher work in a big classroom together, the latter immediately bringing back to speed anyone who grasped something slower than the others]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedial_education
I don't know if there's a book literally like that, because the topic spans multiple university degrees and you should have the theoretical background to recognize situation X as well as to apply intervention Y. Even small children's brains are very complex and yet they lack the self-awareness, reflection and communication skills that would help the teacher in "debugging" the (potentially entangled) issues.
I think that only applies if learning to read in English. In a more phonemic writing system, if you can read, you can read any unfamiliar word too. This way, even a young child can read anything to quickly acquire more vocabulary unrelated to what their parents ever acquired.
No, comprehension is again orthogonal to reading as it is needed in spoken language too. Remember: everybody's (unless you have a severe speech or hearing impairment as a baby) first language is a spoken language, and to extend it to a written language you will have to learn (be taught) an artificial orthography to map to and from. You can know a lot of vocabulary before learning to read (if you ever do). In a language with a phonemic writing system, your sets of spoken and written vocabulary are the same, whereas in English they only overlap. In both cases, knowing a word is orthogonal to knowing its meaning(s).
"We used to think dyslexia was related to IQ but it's largely orthogonal." More specifically, dyslexia is not a generic learning disability, it's a highly specific one (and mostly preventable).
I think you misunderstand. In a largely phonetic language, almost everyone learns to read in one school semester, after which it's a fully solved problem - no spelling bees or anything. Peculiarly, you don't need spelling bees either when learning English later. ("Contronyms" and "words" are orthogonal to reading as they apply to spoken language too (and it's very much automatic).)
I think you don't understand the various orthographies.
Again, you base the claim that English is not phonetic based on confusions in how different phonemes are represented using the 26 symbols of our alphabet. A thing that is defined as symbols representing phonemes. You could also have a syllabary or a logography. The syllabary would still be phonetic, of course. A logographic writing system is truly not phonetic. Think emoji.
And, of course, I'm summarizing very very briefly.
Of course, you don't have to believe me; you could also read about the orthographic depth of English vs other languages on Wikipedia or something. "In shallow orthographies, the spelling-sound correspondence is direct: from the rules of pronunciation, one is able to pronounce the word correctly.[1] That is to say, shallow (transparent) orthographies, also called phonemic orthographies, have a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, and the spelling of words is very consistent. Examples include Japanese kana, Hindi, Lao (since 1975), Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, Georgian, Latin, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, and Welsh. [--] English is unusual because it combines deep orthography, with multiple possible sounds for many letters.[2] This makes it among the most difficult languages in the world to learn to read." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth
From the intro of the page you link: "The orthographic depth of an alphabetic orthography indicates the degree to which a written language deviates from simple one-to-one letter–phoneme correspondence."
So, sure, if you want to discuss about how English orthography is deep, go for it. I won't even really disagree. Quite the contrary.
The opening claim was that it wasn't phonetic, though. That is a different thing.
It is funny seeing Japanese as the first example in your quote, as it has both a phonetic syllabary (two, actually) and a non-phonetic logography. That is, you literally have to learn to read a non-phonetic orthography in order to read Japanese!
Probably I missed the exact names, I guess I should have used "deep" vs "shallow", instead of "phonetic" vs "not phonetic". The problem is that there are so many rules that it looks like each word has a special rule.
I agree that Spanish also have subtle rules, we have some unusual cases here in Buenos Aires, in es-ar-bue the last "d" in "ciudad" is very faint and we say the "ll" almost like a English "sh" instead or an English "lee".
The other day I was joking with my wife, and I told her that to make the list of text transformation to allow a Spanish speaker to read German enters in a napkin:
v -> f
w -> v
ei -> ia [in English, something like "ee ah"]
ie -> ii [in English, something like "ee ee"]
eu -> oi [in English, something like "oh ee"]
sch -> sh [loaned from English, perhaps "y" in pure Spanish but it's confusing]
I probably missed a few cases (like the g), and the pronunciation would not be perfect, but probably close enough to be inteligible by a friendly listener.
I can't imagine how to do a similar table in English, at least a table that enters in a napkin. Let's start with the infamous case of "yesterday" does it sound like "today" or "Friday"? How is the rule? Can you classify all the words in this table https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordfinder/classic/ends/all/... ?
Exactly. Apologies if I made it sound like you didn't have a point. I have a pet peeve against the folks that think we don't have a phonetic alphabet. A combination of words that is largely nonsensical. Alphabets are pretty much definitionally phonetic.
This got particularly bad when we realized that our kid's school was not teaching phonetics, but that the special tutor we hired was running a basic phonetics routine. And that that is really just 44 flashcards for them to work through.
To your point, Spanish generally has 24 phonemes. This is why they can map it to the 26 letters much more straight forwardly. Though, I'm a touch surprised it can map to German so easily, they have more phonemes than English, if I'm not mistaken.
All of that is to say, I'm glad you found the discussion interesting! Apologies if my pet peeve came on too strong. :D
I am curious, btw, I don't understand what you mean about "yesterday" sounding like either "today" or "Friday" The "day" on both of those sounds the same to me?
> To your point, Spanish generally has 24 phonemes. This is why they can map it to the 26 letters much more straight forwardly.
We are also cheating with "ñ" :)
> Though, I'm a touch surprised it can map to German so easily, they have more phonemes than English, if I'm not mistaken.
I'm probably collapsing "ch", "sh", "tsch", "x" and a few more shushy sounds.
I'm ignoring the difference of the German "b" and "w".
I somewhat intentionally forgot "ä", "ö", "ü". (We have an "ü", but the use is very different, it's related to the weird cases of the "g" in Spanish.)
I missed "ß", but that's easy to add to the napkin.
> I am curious, btw, I don't understand what you mean about "yesterday" sounding like either "today" or "Friday" The "day" on both of those sounds the same to me?
Using the "Dora the Explorer" encoding method, I pronounce
today -> too-deh-ee
Friday -> frah-ee-dee (a surprising "ah" in "fri", but a mute "a" in "day")
yesterday -> it depends if you are talking or singing :)
Anyway, my English pronunciation is so bad that I never would confuse "then" and "than", but it looks like it's a common error in some native speakers.
Ah, I think I see. You actually pronounce the "y" in those words? I'm not familiar with any dialects where that is common. I could see it, though. In general, I would expect the pronunciation for all of those is the same. They are all words with the root "day".
I see /təˈdeɪ/ on that page. Per their https://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.html page, the eɪ is how they encode what the other site uses ā for. That is, the "ɪ" is not a separate syllable from the "e".
You should think "the step from single sounds to syllables", and the way to do that is to begin with the easy syllables like "tu", "mi", "el" (not unlike the multiplication or addition tables) before moving to longer ones. [And note that M alone is not "em", it has to be "m" when learning to read - a common pedagogical mistake! M + I makes "mi" not "emi", so M must be "m".] At least that's how children are taught in Finnish schools since sometime before the 1980s, and since then almost everyone learns to read during the first school semester. Also, one simple and efficient protection against dyslexia is to play the Graphogame (or similar) to get a lot of repetition with the sound-letter correspondences while learning to read (for various reasons, some brains take longer to build the necessary connections and you want to avoid the negative affects of learning slower than your peers if you can).
I agree. My older daughter was learning to read before school, and we started with the usual here in Argentina:
ma, me, mi, mo, mu
pa, pe, pi, po, pu
sa, se, si, so, su
...
after a few more rows, we expected her to generalize because she is very smart, but it's harder than what we expected and we have to told her all the 21x5 cases. (The first cases were harder, and the lasts got easier.). I don't remember about the longer silabes like "pra", "bla", ... and there are weird words like "consternado" but I guess it was not obvious.
Yes, I think it will be somewhat random how many cases each child needs to be taught before they generalize. One thing I forgot to mention is that for polysyllabic words, they use a learning aid here: in the beginning, the syllable boundaries are marked with dashes in all text and in the second year, only in longer words. I don't know if it works in Spanish too, something like this: "A-yer ce-na-mos cons-ter-na-dos." Again, I think it's unnecessary for some children but helps others to keep learning while gaining more experience with the syllables.
I contest this. There is no correct "step from" in this. There is a post-hoc explanation for why a lot of things work. And there is some benefit in regularity. But most of this is, as stated, post hoc.
Consider, how do you read "f=ma", or "e=mc^2"? Why don't those follow the same rules? They use the same symbols as our alphabets, after all?
Or consider "do re mi" is pronounced differently from "do re me". And, amusingly, most people will not read those correctly. This doesn't rob the names of the notes as meaningless. Nor does it mean that they are not taught correctly. But you learn to interact with the symbols. Not merely transcribe them between representations.
The levels of support are radically different. Compositors, window managers, UI frameworks, and apps all have mixed and inconsistent levels of support such that the overall experience is that you simply cannot rely on using a Linux system via accessibility.
Unfortunately AT-SPI support is very hit or miss, mostly miss. To get it useable for this required a huge amount of modification. See my other comment for context.
