-ONYMS
You are probably very familiar with the terms synonym and antonym. Yet there are actually quite a few words in English that incorporate the Greek root word ‘onym’ which means ‘name’. Scroll down for a list of the more common … Continued
Why Don’t We Pronounce the ‘k’ in Knife???
Spelling would be so much easier if we either pronounced the ‘k’ in words like ‘knife’, ‘knob’, ‘knit’ and ‘know’ or if the ‘k’ was just omitted. So, why do we have an unpronounced ‘k’ in these words? A little … Continued
Teaching Schwa
Schwa is the unclearly pronounced vowel sound that occurs in multisyllabic words. It is the most common sound in English and can be represented by every vowel grapheme. Schwa is a spelling issue not a reading issue. If students can … Continued
Wine/Whine Merger
The ‘wh’ letter combination can be pronounced /w/ with the ‘h’ not pronounced (e.g., white). It can be pronounced /h/ with the ‘w’ not pronounced (e.g., who) and in some dialects of English it is pronounced /hw/. The placement of … Continued
Is the suffix -ant or –ent?
The suffixes ‘-ant’ and ‘-ent’ are added to words to form a noun to indicate a ‘person who’ or ‘thing that’ (e.g., an ‘assistant’ is a person who assists, a ‘president’ is a person who presides). They are also added … Continued