The Vowels in Our Lives

Since it is the start of a new school year, let’s go elementary in celebration of our littlest scholars at Brimmer and May. Most of us probably haven’t thought a lot about vowels—for ourselves, anyway—since we were first introduced to them in elementary school: a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y. As stand-alone letters they most often just make noises, short and long sounds, but then they can get put together too. Here are some examples, including "rigorous" explanation for each.

 

ae/æ — This configuration actually has a name; it’s called an “ash.” (What? Who’d a thought?) It’s originally a Latin diphthong (of course), and I have to admit that as an English-teacher-in-a-previous-life and an educator for that previous life plus a lot more, I just learned that information while writing this piece. Another benefit of writing! And Mæbe we bring back the May in Brimmer and Mæ and spell it with an ash instead? Before they become later childhood students our pre-K - 2 students will learn about the 8 different spellings of the sound ae makes and come to understand how often the English language breaks its own rules. Oh, and here is a 15-letter ae word for the next time a Scrabble game is in hand: anaesthesiology placed optimally could net 248 points in one go! Hail the Cæsar of Scrabble if you can place that bad boy! (That was actually a ligature I slipped in there, and not a vowel sound to be learned in early childhood; I guess I got ahead of myself.) BTW: French scribes and the invention of the printing press sent the æ to the proverbial ash heap.

 

ai — A ubiquitous dyad of vowels that has taken/will be taking over our linguistic lives and possibly then some. (Note: I follow the if-it’s-a long-u-sound, then it’s preceded by the aversion of the article, not the an version, and vice versa for the short u sound.) I am letting this one be right here.

 

au — The symbol for gold, now worth $4385 per heavy Troy ounce at the time of this writing. However, in early childhood literacy students will not be learning the economics involved here but will be taught what ought to be done when one is abroad and another’s pronunciation is awful: follow the golden rule, always.

 

ei — In Canada, this is pronounced and spelled eh?  In the US this configuration of letters has three different sounds—long a, long e, and long i. Oof! (see below) With this, it’s important to remember the spelling jingle: “i before e except after c, or when sounded like ay as in neighbor and weigh. But be sure not to forfeit (wait, what?) your literacy to spelling; spellcheck is out there and it helps.

 

eu — As of the 1990s, the world’s first and only supranational state/union actor in world politics that iterated from the ECSC to EEC to EU.  Eureka, the Europeans have created trade euphoria!

 

.io — A domain name ending just like others we know better, e.g., .com, .net, .org, .edu, etc.

oo — Oooooooo! 🎉

 

ö — An o with an umlaut? How did this get in here? You don’t see this one so much in the early childhood curriculum unless there is a case of diaeresis to be addressed. Hold on. Don’t run for the Kaopectate just yet. You merely need to start working on pronouncing words like näive and coöperate (actually) a little earlier if you want to get this vowel going. But hold on again. The umlauted o should be used in Kaöpectate too, no, as it fits the usage definition (two dots telling you to pronounce two consecutive vowels in separate syllables) and presents the look on one’s face when dieresis is a-happenin’?

 

y — In expressed word form, this is a curiosity marker for the very young, as in the iterative, “Why is the sky blue?” “Why do I have to brush my teeth?” “Why do I have to go to school?” Later on (in 8th grade, parents!), y begins the shorthanded question your child will write in a text message, e.g., “y rnt u h r yt mom/dad” So y is sometimes a vowel, sometimes a consonant, and sometimes a word? Y-ikes!

 

I know I didn’t get all the vowel combinations here, but our students will get them. When one is literate, that is, able to read and write, it’s hard to remember how complicated the English language is to learn initially. Therefore, we need to give some props to the teachers and the students in Brimmer and May’s Early Childhood classrooms. They will be doing some serious work to teach and learn the words that will guide their current and future creative and intellectual idea formation. Our students will be little Einsteins working on linguistic relativity and bringing to life the Saphir- Whorfian hypothesis as they learn each new vowel-infused word, including how to pronounce the word “queueing” so they don’t have to wait in line for the teacher’s help with this bounded morpheme (Yeah, I just said that.)

 

And with that, ’nuff said.