Pronunciation Guide

People have always mispronounced and misspelled my name.

That's partially my fault.

My last name is Amodeo.  Ah-moh-day-oh.  Often people pronounce my last name to rhyme with rodeo, so it sounds like Ah-moh-dee-oh.   It should sound more like armadillo.  However, since the song "Rock Me Amadeus" came out, people have usually pronounced my last name correctly.  But still, they spell my name Amadeo instead of Amodeo. That's because I'm pronouncing the o like an a. My whole family pronounces it that way  (Ah-mah-day-oh).  For a while, I tried to emphasize the long o in the second syllable, but it just didn't sound right--too much of that schwa action going on.  So I gave up.

Why am I bothering to mention this?  It reminds me of what I do in the classroom.  With a class full of English learners, some or many of them learned accented English at home before they started school.  And with accented English comes mispronunciation.  And with mispronunciation comes misspelling.

I am constantly correcting my kids on their pronunciation.  You might think I'm a little harsh on the immigrants, but that's not it at all.  I was raised by immigrants.

My parents' first language was Italian, and their second was English.  They wanted to be American and learned English, almost to the exclusion of their home language.  My parents rarely spoke to us in Italian, and usually only when they didn't want us to understand them.  Consequently (and sadly), the only Italian I learned from them was catch phrases and swear words.  Nevertheless, my parents were very careful to teach us academic English.

Pronouncing words correctly isn't just important for English learners, it's important for everybody.  Do you really know what you're saying?  Or reading?  I remember once I was reading a school essay out loud to my mom.   I had used the phrase "build a rapport" in the essay, but I pronounced the word "re-por" with a short e.  My mom asked me to repeat the word to make sure she heard it right.  "That word is pronounced ra-por," she said, "how did you spell it?"  And you know, I had spelled it reppore.  Gee, I learned something because she corrected my pronunciation.

I remember that moment when I'm in the classroom.  I'm relentless about correcting my kids on their pronunciation.  I just remember that's how my mom taught me.  Correct mistakes in the beginning so they don't happen again.  This is especially important with my students because about 75% of them are learning English as a second language and don't get very much language support at home.

People who read a lot but don't interact much in the real world have the opposite problem:  mispronouncing tricky words they have only read but not heard.  Having read millions of words, they'll probably mispronounce epitome (that has 4 syllables, not 3) or victuals (the c is silent, u is dropped).  When I hear a mispronunciation like this,  I reverse engineer the word and realize that this person probably has more friends that are books than are carbon-based.  It makes me smile.  They're a nerd.

But let's look at the link to writing.  In elementary school, there are some tricky words to spell, even if they're easy to pronounce.  Words that begin with "tr" are difficult for kids to spell if they haven't seen the word written before.  That's because we pronounce that pair of consonants like this:  "chr" or "tchr."  Go ahead, say the word train, treat, or try.  The t sound is gobbled up by that r, and the result is the same as a ch.  So my kids that have limited experience with reading and writing sound out the word, make their best guess, and spell it tchrain.  Usually they put the t in the beginning because they have some vague sense that it begins with the letter t.  But when they actually listen to the word, they hear the "ch" and are compelled to include that in the spelling.  When I read inventive spelling like that from a fourth grader (who should know better), I think to myself:  haven't you read anything at all with the word train in it?  Do you really not recognize this word or its spelling?

I've attempted to compensate for this, unsuccessfully.  I've pronounced the t, aspirating and spitting away, but it just sounds forced and awkward.  "Train" comes out more like "ter-rain."   It's not how we speak.  Plus, in addition to writing correctly, kids need to learn how to hear and understand common spoken English.  It's an uphill battle.  I waffle between annunciating clearly and speaking like a normal lazy speaker.

The link between speaking and writing is clear.  You definitely have a leg up in the spelling department if you can pronounce a word correctly.  If you don't pronounce a word correctly, you will probably butcher it on paper.  But then again, this is English.  If you've only heard a word and attempt to write it, good luck.  The English language is fraught with unusual spellings--and if you have never read the word "fraught" you will probably misspell it.

When you get right down to it, the best pathway to writing well is to read as much as you can.   A mispronounced word comes across as an innocent mistake.  A misspelled word comes across as an ignorant mistake.