Freeman and Freeman Chapter 5 Exercises

3) Some of the websites provided by the book were no longer in use, or I could not find sufficient information. I found some interesting etymologies on this website: http://www.fun-with-words.com/etym_example.html (letters a-d) and  http://www.etymonline.com (letters e-j).

a) avocado- Originally, the Aztecs called it “ahucati” meaning “testicle”, partly because that is what the shape of the fruit looks like, and it is also known to be an aphrodisiac. When the Spaniards heard the word pronounced, they thought it sounded like “avocado”, which means “advocate” in Spanish. The fruit was named avocado when it was brought to Europe through Spain.

b) malaria- In mediaeval Italian, “mal” meant “bad” and “aria” meant “air”, so the literal translation means “bad air.” They believed people got malaria from breathing in bad air around the swamps in Rome.

c) phony- British thieves used code words and one was “fawney”, used for a gilt ring. They would try to sell these as real gold rings, which they were not. Now the word “phony” is used to describe anything fake.

d) quarantine- It comes from the French word “quarante” meaning “forty” and “aine” meaning “around.” The original spelling was “quarantaine”, and was used to describe a period of time of about forty days when ships coming into port suspected of carrying disease were told not to have any contact with the shore.

e) dachshund- This word comes from 1881 in Germany. “Dachs” means “badger” and “hund” means “dog”; they are called this name because they were bred to be used in the hunting of badgers.

f) hag- The current meaning is “ugly old woman” which derives from the 13^th century Old English period word “haegtesse” which meant “witch, fury” (There is the assumption that “-tesse” was a suffix.).

g) macadam- It was named in 1824 after Scottish civil engineer John L. McAdam, who invented the method of leveling roads and laying down rocks of uniform size on top in layers.

h) nacho- According to the Dallas Morning News in 1995, it was named after Ignacio Anaya, who invented the dish in Mexico in 1943.

i) Sabbath- It comes from the Old English word “sabat” which means “Saturday”; the Jews celebrated this day of the week as a day of rest. In the early part of the 15^th century, it began to apply to the first day of the week “Sunday”.

j) tabloid- It was formed in 1884 meaning “small tablet of medicine” for concentrated/compressed drugs. The word is formed from the word “tablet” and the Greek suffix “-oid”. By 1898, it was used to mean anything that was compressed/shortened, such as “tabloid journalism” (1901) because it consisted of short articles.

4. Phonetic Demand-pig, let, cat, kit, dot

Semantic Demand-psycho/psychosis, hygiene/hygienist, therapy/therapeutic, sign/signature, lyric/lyrical

Etymological Demand-lacquer, lacrosse, laissez-faire, lampoon, hybrid, karaoke

8.  Words that end in “-ch” and “-tch”: beach, ditch, leech, beseech, pitch, rich, hitch, notch, stitch, peach, reach, teach, twitch, catch, latch, match, search, branch, finch, crouch, touch, speech

*By looking at this list of words, it is evident that there are patterns. According to the website http://manuscriptedit.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/words-ending-in-ch-and-tch-english-proofreading/, if the final “-ch” comes after a consonant, then it ends in “-ch” as in the words “branch” and “finch”. It also states that if the final “-ch” sound comes after a one-letter vowel, then the word will end in “-tch” as in the words “pitch” and “notch”. The final rule listed says that if the final “-ch” sound comes after a two-letter vowel, the ending should be “-ch” as in the words “crouch” and “speech”. I suppose there are some exceptions to these rules, as there are many exceptions in English grammar; for example, according to the rule, “rich” has only a one-letter vowel and should be spelled “ritch”.

Words that end in “-ge” and “-dge”: cage, badge, rage, gauge, page, sage, wage, edge, ledge, pledge, fridge, cottage, savage, large, package

*There also patterns when forming words that end in “-ge” and “-dge”. According to the website http://www.justmommies.com/unit_studies/spelling-rules.shtml, if there is a short-vowel sound before the ending, then use “-dge” as in the words “badge” and “edge”.  In other cases (i.e. if the preceding syllable before the “-ge” ending has a long-vowel sound or a consonant sound), then use “-ge” as in the words “page” and “cottage”. This rule can be a little tricky, but the important part to remember is to look at the preceding syllable. For example, at first glance one may think that “package” would be spelled “packadge” because of the short-vowel sound of the letter “a” that precedes the “-dge” ending; however, one must look at the ending sound of the preceding syllable “pack”, which is a consonant sound “k”. Therefore, a “-ge” ending is needed in this case.  

Application Questions

Application Questions

Freeman and Freeman p. 96

5) The phoneme /m/ has two allophones in English: [m] as in make and [m̩] as in blossom. After doing research online, I found that many other languages have the phoneme/m/, but I could not find much information relating to the allophones. For example, I looked at Spanish phonology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology) and it explained that in the language, the /m/ sound is pronounced as a nasal phoneme, such as in the Spanish word cama, which means “bed”.  After reading about the Spanish language, it makes me think that they have the allophone [m] but not the allophone [m̩] (a syllabic nasal) since I did not read anything about it. I would like to learn more about allophones in other languages, but unfortunately did not find much information about the phoneme /m/.

6) I think learning about different dialects is interesting. Although I do not know anyone from the southern United States, I have heard some people speak in this dialect on television and have read about it. When people from the South speak, it is said they have a “twang” to their voice, which makes the words sound as if they are drawn out in a type of nasal speech. The vocabulary pronounced in the southern states is different from other places around the Unites States. Words from the Upper South that are interesting are “snake doctor”, which means “dragonfly” and “egg turner”, which means “spatula”. In the Lower South the residents may refer to their grandmother and grandfather as “big mamma” and “big daddy”. In reading about the Upper South, it is fascinating to realize that they disregard “standard” ways to conjugate verbs, such as with the verb “know”; they will use it in a sentence such as “They knowed I went to the store” instead of saying “They knew I went to the store” (https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/downing/www/course/350-192/printsouth.html). Although dialects of different regions may be different, it does not mean one dialect is correct and the other is not. I suppose in the professional world, people view certain dialects, such as the Southern dialect, as being wrong because they do not sound “normal”. I am not sure if there is a standard dialect because not everybody grew up in the same community. If people wish to enter a professional environment, I think it is important for them to speak with vocabulary and syntax that everyone around them can understand, although it would be fine to pronounce the words in the same manner with their own accent of their region.

Minimal Pairing

Minimal Pairs Activity Lesson Plan

Objective: to teach ESL students to listen to the pronunciation of minimal pairs and spell them correctly

Time: 5 minutes

Activity:

1. Prior to playing this game, you should review sets of minimal pair words by writing the words on the board and saying them together out loud.

2. You can split your class into two teams and take turns choosing one person from each team to come up to the board.

3. As two students are at the board (one from each team), you will say a sentence using two minimal pair words and the students must write the sentence (i.e. “I said I am sad”, “The sheep is on the ship”, “My vest looks the best”, etc.).

4. The first student to write the sentence with the minimal pairs spelled correctly earns a point for their team. If both students seem to be stuck on how to spell the words, then they may get help from a team player.

5. You repeat steps 3 and 4 with different students. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins! Play this game many times throughout the year for practice with minimal pairs as your class learns more of them.

Accommodations:

-As students gain more practice with minimal pairs, you may choose a student to create the sentence instead of yourself.

-You can create a “Minimal Pairs Idea Box” for students to think of minimal pairs sentences on their own, write them down on a slip of paper, and submit them in the box to be used in future games.