I Before E, Except When It Isn't

We are slogging through the process of teaching our young son to read and I am beginning to wonder if giving someone the gift of literacy is worth the effort if the language you are working with is English.

I would have though this would have been easier.  I mean, he has known that those sticks and squiggles we call "letters" have had some sort of meaning since before he was a year and a half old.  The first ones he could name were "A" (primacy effect, I guess) and "X" (thanks, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse treasure hunt episode!). He knew the alphabet song soon afterwards and could identify all uppercase and lowercase letters and the sounds they allegedly make sometime before he turned two and a half. 

I say "allegedly" because this stupid language is rife with land-mines  for someone who is new to English.  This is especially true if that person is also new to the concept of "there are exceptions to every rule - probably even this one - so you should pretty much ignore most things people tell you... Except this, of course".  To you or me, that's pretty much our world in a nutshell. To a three-year-old, it sounds like you are just making it up as you go along. 

An aside, here.  If you are ever cornered by a three-year-old and are asked a question you don't have a snap, official sounding answer to (when you die does what you are holding go to Heaven with you, why does Darth Vader wear a cape, etc.), watch for a subtle head turn away about five seconds into your "ummmmm" filled response.  Lacking the language skills to do so directly, this is the closest they can come to tiredly sighing "Once again, I ask a simple question and, once again, you don't have a blanking clue what you are talking about, do you?  You disgust me."

Where was I?  Oh, yeah...  Land-mines. 

A famous land-mine example is the argument that the made-up word "ghoti" should be pronounced "fish": 'gh' as in rough, 'o' as in lemon, and 'ti' as in station.  Another great example is the song Crazy ABCs by BNL  - "A" is for "aisle", "B" is for "bdellium", "C" is for "czar", etc. Yet another is the...um...relentlessly thorough bit by Gallagher talking about the difficulties a kid has learning to read, but you can watch that one without me. I think the routine is, like, six and a half hours long, so... you know... enjoy. 

Did you know that, in ancient times, our species had neither the heightened science nor the sufficient leisure time to develop their weird customs into a true society?  Did you also know that previous sentence violates the "I before E" rule ten times? It would have been more, but I couldn't figure out how to shoehorn "eigenvalues" or "Keith" into there.  Anyway, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list of rule violations. 

I try to be aware of these problems ahead of time and keep it very simple like in the chalkboard you see above.  Most of the time I do okay but recently, without thinking it through, I started one of our lessons by trying to get him to spell the words for numbers.  Of course we started with the word "one" and, of course, he started to sound it out: "w..." 

I said "No, no, no... Not 'W'.. 'One' starts with 'O', not 'W'. Well, 'won... w-o-n, like after you win something, does, but not the number 'one'.  You know, forget that for now. Let's try 'two' ... No, wait, that does have a 'w' but it's silent, plus you have the whole 'to' and 'too' thing thrown in there.  Hmmm, 'three' is a little long, 'four' has the same problem as 'two', 'five' has that silent 'e' thing... Hey, you wanna go ride your bike instead?"

"Yes!" he responded.

"Yeah, me too.  Get your helmet and let's go. We'll pick this up again later."