Talk:Alphabetic principle

POV tag on section regarding role of alpha principle in beginning reading

Could whoever added the POV tag be more specific about what you think the problem is? I could give hundreds of citations for this information --- is there an alternative view that you think should be presented?

Best,

Rosmoran 02:50, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

"Learning the connection between the sounds of speech and print is a critical skill for beginning readers; this is because understanding that there is a direct relationship between letters and sounds enables a reader to retrieve the pronunciation of a written word associated with a spoken word." reads to me like a sweeping statement of phonics. Phonics is controversial; see Phonics#History and controversy and Whole language. I am not an advocate of either view. The statement needs either to be qualified to note that some people disagree, or expanded to show to what extent everybody on both sides of the phonics/whole-language debate agrees on a minimum level of alphabetism. Or a citation from a known whole-language advocate agreeing that "Learning the connection between the sounds of speech and print is a critical skill for beginning readers" would be perfect. jnestorius^(talk) 03:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that the alphabetic principle is the same as phonics, which is a teaching method. It is the understanding that words have parts that are based on sounds (ie phonemes) and that these phonemes are represented in printed form. Reaching this understanding is important for beginner readers - whether they do it through explicit phonetic teaching or whether they come to that awareness themselves through whole word teaching methods. There are a variety of references for that - Blachman, 1997, Liberman, 1971, Lyon 1995 etc. The alphabetic principle is different from the teaching method. I think the tag should come off--Vannin 21:45, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Alphabetic principle is in Template:Reading under "READING INSTRUCTION". The Phonics article has a section called "Alphabetic principle". The Reading education article's Phonics section states "The applicability of the Alphabetic principle to English is disputed by opponents of phonics". As regards the principle independent of considerations of learning, we already have an article Phonemic orthography, although that can apply to syllabaries as well as alphabets. The fact that people read and write Chinese seems to prove that the "alphabetic principle" is not essential to reading and writing (though Chinese writing, contrary to what the article implies, does have a phonemic component). jnestorius^(talk) 22:38, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It may be that the Reading education article needs to be revised. Even Ken Goodman, one of the high priests of Whole Language, states that children need to understand how sounds and letters relate.

The alphabetic principle is not critical for learning to read and write Chinese because Chinese is not an alphabetic writing system. You are correct in that Chinese is not entirely ideographic --- it has syllabic components as well (but not phonemic components).

The alphabetic principle is only relevant to writing systems that use ..... an alphabet.

It is also interesting to note that Chinese has another writing system that the Chinese (mainland China, not Hong Kong or Taiwan) use when first teaching young children to read because it is so hard to learn enough of the Chinese characters to read much of anything. Want to take a guess what type of writing system this is? ..... You guessed it. An alphabetic writing system, called pinyin.

Rosmoran 22:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

"Even Ken Goodman, one of the high priests of Whole Language, states that children need to understand how sounds and letters relate." Simply add a citation from Goodman's work to this effect and I have no objection to removing the POV tag. Explaining the distinction betewen Phonics and the Alphabetic Prinicipal would also entail removing the {{main|Phonics}} tag. I am not trying to engage in a debate: I imagine I know much less about these issues than Vannin or Rosmoran. I am approaching this article as a reader rather than a writer of it, and trying to reconcile the information in all the articles as best I can. Any improvement of other articles in the area is also welcome, of course. jnestorius^(talk) 22:42, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to add a sentence that describes how the two instructional approaches would deal with the issue of alphabetic principle. I'm not sure that either side would agree with what I've written though! Does that help?--Vannin 02:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I'm happy to remove the POV tags, thanks. I'm not qualified to comment on the accuracy of your additions. Note that the article still lacks citations, so that tag is still there at the top. jnestorius^(talk) 19:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this needs to be re-opened. The alphabetic principle is not essential to reading, even in alphabetic languages. It is a pillar of most pedagogies and practices, but not essential. Rfugal (talk) 13:00, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

English section

I also think the English orthography section needs work. The rhyme should probably go -- it's fairly trivial; and it belongs in English orthography not here, though really it belongs in WikiSource not Wikipedia; though really it might be copyright. In fact, this whole section is what made me question the difference between the "alphabetic principle" and Phonemic orthography. Does it really add to general information? Some more germane questions the section might answer:

• do English-speaking children learn to read more slowly and less perfectly that those learning more alphabetic languages?
• to what extent does the less-alphabetic nature of English spelling impact the debate about teaching English reading? (e.g. do, say, Finnish educators debate Phonics vs Whole language?)
• mention of Initial Teaching Alphabet

jnestorius^(talk) 19:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You make some very good points and identify some aspects of the topic that would be good to address directly. I'll see what I can do about that when I focus on this article again. I added the only sources currently cited, but at this point I have only added general sources for the general information. I do have additional sources for specific statements (that I haven't yet added to the article).

I can actually answer a couple of your questions. Yes, English and French speaking children take much longer to learn basic reading skills than Spanish and Finnish speaking children. I think the range is something like 1-3 years, English being the worst (of course).

The phonics/whole language debate is really a non-issue in Finnish, for example, because more "pure" alphabetic languages don't require as much instruction to achieve mastery. A big part of the whole-word / whole language complaint about phonics is their claim that phonics is drudgery and "drill and kill", thus turning off kids from enjoying reading (which is often the case historically but easily avoidable if teachers have any basic knowledge of the structure of the English language --- it can actually be fun to learn a lot of this stuff).

I just need to go relocate references to back up my statements. I've seen this information many times in many contexts, but I'll have to poke around to find specific sources. :-)

The article really is kind of a mess at this point. I'm working on several articles on the topic of reading acquisition, so I look at the articles as more of a set than as individual articles. At this point, this particular article should probably be considered more stub-like than article-like. I guess I'm just saying, more to come!

I didn't add the rhyme to the article, and I agree that it should probably go. But, I can confirm that there is no copyright for it. It was published decades ago in a newspaper in the UK, the author identified only by initials.

The distinction I would draw between the terms "phonemic orthography" and "alphabetic principle" is really related to the information domain in which the article exists. The former is a linguistic term that really belongs in the same virtual "space" as other topics about writing systems, alongside articles on ideograms and syllabaries. The latter is a term commonly used in context of reading acquisition/education. The alphabetic principle article should be in the same virtual "space" as other topics about beginning reading instruction, such as phonics and reading fluency. So, the articles for the two terms will approach a similar topic from very different perspectives, which will ultimately result in content that is considerably different.

We could move all of this this information into the reading skills acquisition article, but eventually it would just have to be broken out again. I kind of envision an article series on reading acquisition, with a top level article written in Summary style. That's the genesis of the Reading navigation template I created (that you see in the top right corner of this article as well as a number of other articles).

Of course, I expect my "vision" to evolve based on the input of other editors and readers, or perhaps even to be ultimately scrapped!

Sorry this is so long and hope it makes sense .... Rosmoran 05:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Place of the alphabetic principle in beginning reading

I added some information to this section, but when I look at it, it is clear that it is too heavily weighted toward pedagogy. I'm working on the Reading education and Reading skills acquisition articles also and will work to move some of this information into those articles.

I'm having difficulty identifying where the line should be drawn in this section. Suggestions and edits welcome.

Best, Rosmoran 15:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Change in lead section "all written languages"

Hi,

I think that this phrase should be reverted. The text as revised implies that all written languages are phonological, which is most definitely not the case as they are not all alphabetic.

I'm open to discussing this, however, so am not yet making the change. I will soon if there is no response to my post.

Best, Rosmoran (talk) 19:56, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Definition of Phoneme.

There seems to be general confusion as to what a phoneme is, on this page and others. The Phoneme page does indeed give the proper definition, but the rest of Wikipedia seems to be confused, which I really noticed in the English orthography page, where there seems to be a complete misunderstanding of the phonemic principle. But, we must deal with one piece at a time, and right now the definition of phoneme given around Wikipedia is one with which no competent linguist would agree.

Of course, I notice that none of those pages with bad definitions cite sources. I wish I had time, or I would go and find the proper sources, but as most of these pages are also written up with the rest of them using that bad definition in examples and support, it is going to be a lot of work to fix this little problem. 172.165.228.61 (talk) 01:08, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I removed the word "phoneme" from the article. It was unnecessary in the paragraph in which the word was used.

Best, Rosmoran (talk) 07:13, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Reference to Italian in See Also

Italian is my first language, by the way.

The text used to say that Italian is "a well-known example of a language with a spelling that is frequently updated to keep following the alphabetic principle" -- unsourced, by the way. Well, it's not the case. Italian spelling reforms are actually rare, and the language academia is commonly perceived to be quite conservative with respect to the changes in a living language. The "Accademia della Crusca" has a semi-official role in these matters, decreeing about the correct uses of the language -- France also has a similar institution for the French language, with a similarly conservative stance. This may sound surprising to English native speakers as English is a much more fluid language, at least in its present form, but the truth is that languages like Italian or French evolve much more slowly: grammar, spelling and pronunciation are perceived as proscriptive rather than descriptive, and variations are just considered "incorrect". And since the sanctioned pronunciation does not change, spelling is also very "static".

I've changed the link so that it just says that Italian closely follows the alphabetic principle, which of course is correct.

--positron (talk) 15:20, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Thinking again, maybe French was not the best example for my argument: French had some recent spelling reforms, although relatively minor. Well, that was reasonable, because French doesn't follow the alphabetic principle.

I still stand for my point about Italian. Sorry for the noise,

--positron (talk) 15:40, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Language classification

The classification of languages should be improved using good sources. There is a very clear "ranking" of all languages from the "simplest" one to the most complex one, but the article currently follows no rule to mention them; for instance, it currently lists «Finnish, Estonian, Italian, Spanish, Armenian and Georgian» but not Romanian which is among the most "simplest" languages with regard to spelling. Nemo 09:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Ancient Greek (with clear diphtong pronunciation) is at least in part phonetic

Plus every single letter corresponds to a sound and to a certain extent, much like English, I think that Greek adheres to the Alphabetic principle. Perhaps it deserves some kind of mention for at least partially adhering to the Alphabetic Principle. Ἑλλαιβάριος/Ellaivarios (talk) 16:42, 11 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ellaivarios (talk • contribs) 16:40, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

All European languages except English and French

All European languages, except English and French have Phonetic Ortography, not just the ones you mention in the article. The phonetic alphabets in these languages are used for its ancient purpose - to enable writing the words by the phonetic rule one latter - one sound. That's what the alphabet is created for, not for making a circus of the words. Regards;50.98.147.64 (talk) 02:20, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Yep, the Irish language is certainly written purely phonetically! AnonMoos (talk) 16:33, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

</irony> --Thnidu (talk) 08:52, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Endeavor not to conflate/confuse phonetic and phonemic. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:24, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Assessment

• Prose Quality

Well-written The prose is not bad, but doesn't quite feel encyclopedic. There are some minor errors that should be fixed and the article could greatly benefit from copy editing.

Structure: The article is structured into sections of related material.

Understandable: The article is written in such a way that a non-expert would be able to learn something.

• Verifiability: Only two statements are sourced, despite a number of claims being made. I will add citation need templates to some of my specific concerns.
• Coverage of Topic: The content of the article does not seem to adequately cover the topic at hand.

Neutral Point of View: Largely yes, but the article seems to state opinion as fact namely places like: "The spelling systems for some languages, such as Spanish, are relatively simple" which is a questionable way for an encyclopedia, especially an article about linguistics, to talk about writing systems. A source as to the relative complexity of these systems would be useful as would avoiding qualitative assessments.

Supporting Material: The article has an infobox which is good. It may be useful to consider whether images of different alphabetic systems would contribute to the article.

Overall rating: Stub-Class

Improving citations, avoiding qualitative assessments of various orthographic systems, and expanding the content in general are priorities for this article.

Wugapodes (talk) 06:35, 12 April 2015 (UTC)‎

Chall

One reference on this page consisted of the single name "Chall", which was totally useless. This was on the second sentence in the second paragraph of section Role in beginning reading,

Proponents of phonics argue ... upon which comprehension depends.

Gronk Oz found that the ref

was introduced in this edit on 1 July 2010 by an IP editor who has never made any other edits. There is nothing in the context at the time to help with filling out the details.

(See WP:THQ § Template to tag inadequate ref?, where the discussion took place.)

Cullen328 found the book, by educator and literacy researcher Jeanne Chall, that was probably meant. I have added a proper citation for that book, though of course without page number; but we can only suppose that that's the source that was meant.

--Thnidu (talk) 10:44, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

"Role in beginning reading" section needs to go beyond English

"Two contrasting philosophies exist with regard to emergent readers learning to associate letters to speech sounds in English." Fair enough, given the extreme phonological-graphemic incoherence of bough, rough, through, though, cough... and numerous other series, if only pairs -- pairs/pears, peace/piece, red/read, right/rite, fined/find... machine/decline, climb/limb, look/kook, some/home... etc. etc.). What about reading/spelling in near-phonemic scripts such as Italian and Finnish? Basic level question: Does the concept of the spelling bee even make sense for those languages? Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:56, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Unactioned hidden text

User:Rosmoran left the following as hidden text in the article in a 2007 edit, but then failed to perform any further action with this text. BD2412 T 04:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

The alphabetic principle is that, in such writing systems, each grapheme (contextually) represented a phoneme at the time and place of its orthographic inception or last change. ... , where one written word may have several readings and one spoken word may have several writings. The principle is generally not applied to a syllabary like Japanese kana, because of the huge amount of syllables possible compared to phones. Due to diachronic change and synchronic geographical and sociocultural differences, there is, by definition, no standardised alphabet that renders the spoken language truthfully (and vice versa). Literal language is always more uniform than oral language.

BD2412 T 04:16, 28 December 2023 (UTC)