Question on syllabication

[jen1134]

I'm trying to make Colorful Word lists for 3A's SWO as they were really helpful for us in Traditional Spelling. My 7th grader has always struggled with spelling so I'm doing the same with SWO Level H. I'm running into trouble though:

Based on TSII, I marked the "nd" in the word "abandon" as a consonant blend. But when I looked up the syllabication for it, the "n" and "d" are being split into different syllables. The same with the word "tendency". Since they're in different syllables, should they not be marked as consonant blends? Also, how would the -tion ending be marked in words like "installation"?

(And for my own benefit...should the end marks in the above sentences be inside the quotation marks or not?? I can never remember!)

[Mom2mthj]

I think blends are more common at beginning and ends of words.
From All About Spelling, Start by finding ink the vowels and then seeing how many consonants are between. If 2 then split between them, if one it usually goes to the second syllable.
a-ban-don the b goes to the second syllable, when you look at a and o, you split between the two consonants. Second syllable accented, other two bowls have the schwa sound
ten-den-cy split the n and d between the first two vowels, split n and c between the e and y
in-stal-la-tion In is a prefix, split the double consonants between the two letter a’s, tion is a suffix. The open syllable la has a long vowel which is expected

[Mom2mthj]

I would not mark those nd occurrences as consonant blends

[Michael]

(And for my own benefit...should the end marks in the above sentences be inside the quotation marks or not?? I can never remember!)

Good afternoon Jen,

I asked our copywriter, and she says periods and commas always go inside the quotes, while the exclamation mark, question mark, dash, et al. go outside the quotes unless said mark is part of the quote. To use your sentences as examples:

• The same with the word "tendency." (period within the quotes)
• Also, how would the -tion ending be marked in words like "installation"? (question mark outside the quotes)

HTH!

[jen1134]

Thanks to both of you! One more question: how should the -tion ending be colored?

[Michael]

Thanks to both of you! One more question: how should the -tion ending be colored?

You're welcome! Depending on how detailed of an analysis you want, you could treat tion as a suffix, or you could break it into a ti consonant team spelling /sh/ and an on spelling of final /ən/. See the final unit of Classical Phonics on Advanced Phonograms. (I'd include the exact page numbers, but I don't have a copy of the book with me!)

HTH!

[Michelle T]

Good morning Jen,

It is a wonderful idea to help your speller by using the color coding system learned in the Traditional Spelling series. Note that when you color code the first step is syllabication. This is helpful because multisyllabic words will look as if they should be color coded one way when you look at the word as whole (tendency) but would obviously be colored differently when broken into syllables ten - den - cy. When you see the syllables it is obvious that nd is not a blend.

[whippoorwill]

I think part of the issue might be that there are two thoughts on syllabification. One camp is focused on meaning, so keeps a root word together (tend-en-cy), while the other camp is more concerned with showing correct pronunciation (ten-den-cy). MP’s old Phonics Guide was when I first stumbled into this problem, as often the syllables were divided the first way, instead of the second way. I was more used to the second way.

[enbateau]

I think part of the issue might be that there are two thoughts on syllabification. One camp is focused on meaning, so keeps a root word together (tend-en-cy), while the other camp is more concerned with showing correct pronunciation (ten-den-cy). MP’s old Phonics Guide was when I first stumbled into this problem, as often the syllables were divided the first way, instead of the second way. I was more used to the second way.

I was not aware there was more than one way to syllabicate a word. Now, I have seen dividing words at the end of a line vary based on meaning vs. syllables, but I haven't seen alternate syllabication as a former English teacher.

Syllables break according to how many beats it takes to say a word, to keep at least one written vowel in every syllable saying its appropriate short, long, broad or lazy schwa sound, and according to added prefixes and suffixes.

[Michelle T]

We syllabicate according to the dictionary. Having said that, a problem I ran into when researching for syllabication in the original " Phonics Guide for Reading and Spelling" was that some dictionaries would syllabicate according to how we pronounce rather than following the syllabication rules, as someone mentioned above. We follow the syllabication rules and compare this to the dictionary. Michael double checks and researches everything but some things still get past us. If there is ever a question, please let us know. The basic syllabication rules can be found in the appendix of "Traditional Spelling" pp. 173-174.