# Learning to write



## BlueWolf

How is it generally taught to the children to write in your country? I'm particulary curious about the languages with difficult writing spelling, like English. How do the children learn to write? Which are the teachers' secrets to teach it?
For example in Italy in order to teach the children when to write  ho/hai/ha/hanno versus o/ai/a/anno (h is silent in Italian) there are rules like _"are, ere, ire l'acca fanno fuggire"_ (are, ere, ire make the h run away, because before infinitive verbs (which ends with are, ere, ire) they never need the h).
Are there rules like it in your scholastic system?


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## Hakro

I can hardly participate this discussion because in Finnish all the words are written as they are pronounced and vice versa. The only exception is the ng-sound (as in "singing") for which there is no special letter for it (nor in any other European language).

The main problem in writing Finnish may be the compound words (Finnish is full of them), and many Finns never learn them.


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## LouisaB

I'm afraid we don't have many good spelling rules in English, which may be why our spelling is so erratic! The only one I can remember immediately is the little rhyme _'i before e, except after c'_ to explain why in 'piece' and 'believe' the 'i' comes first, yet in 'receive' and 'deceit' the 'e' comes first.

Is that the kind of thing you mean, BlueWolf?

LouisaB


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## BlueWolf

LouisaB said:


> I'm afraid we don't have many good spelling rules in English, which may be why our spelling is so erratic! The only one I can remember immediately is the little rhyme _'i before e, except after c'_ to explain why in 'piece' and 'believe' the 'i' comes first, yet in 'receive' and 'deceit' the 'e' comes first.
> 
> Is that the kind of thing you mean, BlueWolf?



Yes, that too, but how do you learn to write so in the end? You just memorize every word?


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## libertylover

basically you must memorize everyword in english.
I am a terrible speller and thats what I had to do in the end because I simply could not sound out a lot of the words. I remember in school we had workbooks that were our "spellers" and words would be introduced and must be spelled and used correctly. We also had spelling test... which I did horrible at but basically in English you have to memorize each word as you learn it.


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## LouisaB

I'm afraid that's mostly exactly what we do. Of course, some of our spelling is phonetic (dog, cat etc) which is simple, and the rest we learn by familiarisation with the 'groups' of words - eg once you have learned 'pound', then 'ground' and 'hound' are easy. However, even the group system contains traps, because we have so many exceptions. The word 'group' is one itself - it's pronounced like 'hoop', but spelt like 'ground'!

The most notorious group is that of words containing 'ough'. We think we have mastered this when we learn 'enough' and 'tough'. Then along comes 'plough' which is pronounced 'plow' not 'pluff', and 'cough', which is pronounced 'coff' not 'cuff'. And why, come to that, do we spell 'muff' as 'muff', and not 'mough'?

The English linguist Philip Howard once famously said English was the least phonetic written language in the world. He gave as an example the word 'fish', and said that arguably this could be spelt as 'ghoti' - ie 'gh' for 'f' (as in 'enough'), 'o' for 'i' (as in 'women') and 'ti' for 'sh' (as in 'station').

Depressing, isn't it?

LouisaB


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## libertylover

I had never heard that example before and before I read the explaination it didn't make sense, but it is quite amusing


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## .   1

BlueWolf said:


> Yes, that too, but how do you learn to write so in the end? You just memorize every word?


Basically yes.
People often refer to people who are well spoken or are able to write well by saying they must have been read to by their parents at a very young age. It appears that children who can read and write well before they attend school maintain a vast advantage over the poor sods with parents who rely on the educational system to teach them how to read and write.
It seems to me that the only way to effectively learn such a scatterbrain language as English is to learn it at the knee as a very young child.
I can still remember reading to my two year old daughter one night as she was snuggled up in my arms. It was a book poem called 'The Apricot Tree'. I was getting tired and I made a mistake with a word and a tiny little finger pointed to the word. I read the word again and she smiled at me. She had learned to read by simply reading along with me when I thought that she was just looking at the illustrations. She was still too young to be talking effectively but she could read. It was one of those moments that make parenting wonderful.

.,,


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## la reine victoria

I remember when my sons were learning to write they were taught about "magic 'e', which made the vowel say its name".

Examples:

bit - add magic 'e' and 'i' says its name - "bite"
hop - magic 'e' makes 'o' say its name - "hope"
rat - magic 'e' makes 'a' say its name - "rate"
cut - magic 'e' makes 'u' say its name - "cute"

I don't know if this is the sort of rule you mean, BlueWolf.




LRV


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## luis masci

One of the English words that always called my attention was “daughter”. 
I didn’t find other word spelling like this one. I bet I would guess who is a native speaker and who isn’t just listening this particular word.


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## la reine victoria

. said:


> It was a book poem called 'The Apricot Tree'. I was getting tired and I made a mistake with a word and a tiny little finger pointed to the word. I read the word again and she smiled at me. She had learned to read by simply reading along with me when I thought that she was just looking at the illustrations. She was still too young to be talking effectively but she could read. It was one of those moments that make parenting wonderful.
> 
> .,,


 


Delightful ..,  

I was read to at a very young age and followed the words in the books.  I was reading fluently by age 4, and practising writing,  so had a headstart when I went to school (still aged 4).

My own two sons were brought up in the same way and they, too, were reading and writing when they started school.

It really is a question of memorising every word in English.  Subconsciously we learn words by their shape, so when we misspell a word we look at it and think, "That's not quite right."

How often, when writing by hand, do we make a spelling mistake and try writing it in different ways until we hit on the correct "shape"? 





LRV


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## la reine victoria

luis masci said:


> One of the English words that always called my attention was “daughter”.
> I didn’t find other word spelling like this one. I bet I would guess who is a native speaker and who isn’t just listening this particular word.


 


Another word like "daughter" is "laughter" - but, typically English, they are pronounced completely differently.  





LRV


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## LouisaB

la reine victoria said:


> Another word like "daughter" is "laughter" - but, typically English, they are pronounced completely differently.
> 
> There's also 'slaughter', which _is_ like daughter....
> 
> I suspect the reason for this odd mixture of spellings is the number of times we were invaded when the language was forming. Some of our language derives from Anglo-Saxon, some from Old Norse, some from Latin, and a whole lot more of it goes back to the Norman invasion.
> 
> None of which helps answer your question, BlueWolf, because I don't know any easy tricks for identifying which word derives from which language, and therefore which spelling rule it follows...
> 
> Sorry to be so unhelpful,
> 
> LouisaB


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## Etcetera

I don't remember how I was taught to write, but I remember pretty well my junior sister's experience. The Russian spelling isn't as difficult as the English one, but it's rather tricky. As a rule, children who live in Northern and North-Western parts of Russia make fewer mistakes then kids who grow up in Central and Southern Russia. It's due to some peculiarities of pronunciation: the Northerners pronounce words more closely to the way the words are spelt, whereas the Southerners always replace unstressed 'o' with [a]. There're some other peculiarities, but I think that will do. 
I've noticed that children who read a lot usually do fewer mistakes than those who read a little and don't read at all. Kids usually have good visual memory, and if they see a word several times, it's much easier to them to remember its spelling.


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## BlueWolf

la reine victoria said:


> I remember when my sons were learning to write they were taught about "magic 'e', which made the vowel say its name".
> 
> Examples:
> 
> bit - add magic 'e' and 'i' says its name - "bite"
> hop - magic 'e' makes 'o' say its name - "hope"
> rat - magic 'e' makes 'a' say its name - "rate"
> cut - magic 'e' makes 'u' say its name - "cute"
> 
> I don't know if this is the sort of rule you mean, BlueWolf.



That's really interesting!


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## Sallyb36

I taught my sons that each letter has a name and "speaks" differently, for example A is called ay and says A (as in cat) B is called Bee and says B (as in book) etc.

They could both read by the age of 3, even if they didn't know the meaning of the words they read.


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## Layzie

It's all about reading. Memorizing rules is pretty pointless as they wont help you. Also, there are plenty of English speaking adults who suck at spelling.


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## Thomas F. O'Gara

To revisit and expand an item mentioned earlier by LouisaB, spelling is (or was) usually in English taught by learning groups of words that are similar - the so-called "phonics" system.  For example, English words that end in -ate, are grouped together when taught, like, date, fate, gate, grate, hate, late, etc.  The idea is to reinforce the way that -ate is pronounced.  Of course, this is only effective about 60-70% of the time, and there are a myriad of cases where it doesn't work.


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## Frank06

Hi,


BlueWolf said:


> How is it generally taught to the children to write in your country? I'm particulary curious about the languages with difficult writing spelling, like English. How do the children learn to write? Which are the teachers' secrets to teach it?


I am not sure if I understood your question well: the 'mechanics' of writing (and learning the script in the first place) differs from spelling, so I have the impression you're asking two questions.
The answers so far concentrate upon spelling: so I am not sure which direction you want to go.

Could you please clarify.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Sallyb36

I asked them to draw pictures with each letter of the alphabet and something that begins with that letter, for example, a letter A within an apple, or letter B within a bear or letter C within a cat (some were easier than others), and they used to think it was a great game.


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## BlueWolf

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am not sure if I understood your question well: the 'mechanics' of writing (and learning the script in the first place) differs from spelling, so I have the impression you're asking two questions.
> The answers so far concentrate upon spelling: so I am not sure which direction you want to go.
> 
> Could you please clarify.



I come from a language where written and spoken language has almost 100% equal. The few cases where the words are spelled in an inaspectated way, the are learnt by heart (since they are few) or there are some rules, usually taught as little stories or rhymes.
In languages like English, where I say a word and you can't predict how it's spelled, how do the children learn to write correctly and how do the teachers teach them?
This is my question.


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## Whodunit

In German, pronunciation and writing match very well, although not as identically as in Italian or Finnish. There are some special letters that can have many sounds ('c' can be pronounced like k, s, tsh, or ts), and there are monophthongs that consist of moe than one letter:

sch: sounds like English "sh"
ch: there are two kind of a "ch." One sounds like the 'ch' in Scottish "loch," and the other one is like a whispered "y" or the sound between the h and the u in huge. Some foreign names contain the sound "k," while "c" is written. This can be confusing.

Other pecularities:
st/sp: at the beginning of a word, they are pronounced like "sht" and "shp," respectively. In the middle or at the end of a word, they are pronounced as written. This can get confusing. A classmate of mine always wrote "Schtraße," although it should be "Straße," because the first two letters sound like "sht."

Separating words at the end of a line is another confusing matter. We learned "Trenne nie st, denn es tut ihm weh" (don't ever separate 'st,' because it hurts _him_, referring to the combination 'st'), however this has had to be changed after the new spelling reform was introduced. Today, kids may learn "Trenne ja 'st', denn sonst tut's dir weh" (do separate 'st,' because otherwise it will hurt _you_, referring to the teacher's frightening red pen ).

Is that what you are looking for?


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## BlueWolf

Whodunit said:


> In German, pronunciation and writing match very well, although not as identically as in Italian or Finnish. There are some special letters that can have many sounds ('c' can be pronounced like k, s, tsh, or ts), and there are monophthongs that consist of moe than one letter:
> 
> sch: sounds like English "sh"
> ch: there are two kind of a "ch." One sounds like the 'ch' in Scottish "loch," and the other one is like a whispered "y" or the sound between the h and the u in huge. Some foreign names contain the sound "k," while "c" is written. This can be confusing.
> 
> Other pecularities:
> st/sp: at the beginning of a word, they are pronounced like "sht" and "shp," respectively. In the middle or at the end of a word, they are pronounced as written. This can get confusing. A classmate of mine always wrote "Schtraße," although it should be "Straße," because the first two letters sound like "sht."
> 
> Separating words at the end of a line is another confusing matter. We learned "Trenne nie st, denn es tut ihm weh" (don't ever separate 'st,' because it hurts _him_, referring to the combination 'st'), however this has had to be changed after the new spelling reform was introduced. Today, kids may learn "Trenne ja 'st', denn sonst tut's dir weh" (do separate 'st,' because otherwise it will hurt _you_, referring to the teacher's frightening red pen ).
> 
> Is that what you are looking for?



Yeah! After all German doesn't seem so difficult!  
But for example how do you learn to distinguish between ä and e? Or f and v? Or between b/t, g/k at the end of the word? Or when using the ß?


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## Hakro

Whodunit said:


> Other pecularities:
> st/sp: at the beginning of a word, they are pronounced like "sht" and "shp," respectively. In the middle or at the end of a word, they are pronounced as written.



 Except in the middle of a compound word, for example _Heimstätte_ or _Milchstrasse_.


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## Whodunit

BlueWolf said:


> Yeah! After all German doesn't seem so difficult!


 
Who says that German is difficult? 



> But for example how do you learn to distinguish between ä and e? Or f and v? Or between b/t, g/k at the end of the word? Or when using the ß?


 
Well, that's a problem within several dialects. I live in an area where many people could speak nearly without dialect (except for some words), if they had to. Okay, let me try to answer your questions:

Everyone in Germany knows that there's a difference between "ä" and "e" in pronunciation. Some words (like Käse or sehen) are so common that children already know what they look like. The other words must be learned by rote. Or you have a good feel for the language and are able to distinguish between ä and e by feel. Not many children are able to do this; people usually develop a feel for their mother tongue some time later in elemtary school, I guess.

It's difficult to distinguish "v" from "f" and "w." Words like Fisch and Fuchs are so common that are usually speeled correctly by pupils. Vogel is the most common exponent of the letter V in pre-school books, so this should not be a problem either. Foreign or rare words like Vase must be learned by rote. Pupils may have hardest difficulty with the distinction between viel (much) and fiel ([he] fell), because they are pronounced exactly the same. Even some high school students misspell them sometimes, which is not funny at all. 

I could offer you some rules of thumb to differentiate between "f" and "v" and "w": You will never (or only in foreign words) find a "v" or "w" at the end of a word. The letter "v" usually doesn't occur in the middle of a word either.



Hakro said:


> Except in the middle of a compound word, for example _Heimstätte_ or _Milchstrasse_.


 
They are just compounds, so I would not count them. If you take them apart, you will get Heim+Stätte and Milch+Straße (where the 'st' is at the beginning of the words again). 

I don't think compounds in German are as hard as in Finnish. Most pupils don't see any problem with them.


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## .   1

BlueWolf said:


> In languages like English, where I say a word and you can't predict how it's spelled, how do the children learn to write correctly and how do the teachers teach them?
> This is my question.


It seems as though teachers are not able to effectively teach spelling unless parents have already inculcated children with spelling at a young age.  There are no real rules to spelling in English because it is such a mishmash of words taken from other cultures.  Sometimes these words follow the rules of the original language and sometimes they are modified into English.  
There are so many *weird *exceptions to spelling and punctuation and pronunciation that the only effective way to learn is to learn by *rote *at the *knee *of the parent.

.,,


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## Hakro

Whodunit said:


> They are just compounds, so I would not count them. If you take them apart, you will get Heim+Stätte and Milch+Straße (where the 'st' is at the beginning of the words again).
> 
> I don't think compounds in German are as hard as in Finnish. Most pupils don't see any problem with them.


You're right, of course. I just thought that a foreigner who is not accustomed to the compound words might have problems.

And about the Finnish compound words you are right again. They are one of the biggest problems to native Finns.


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## BlueWolf

. said:


> It seems as though teachers are not able to effectively teach spelling unless parents have already inculcated children with spelling at a young age.



Interessing, do you mean that in English the bigger part in learning to write is done by the parents?


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## Whodunit

BlueWolf said:


> Interessing, do you mean that in English the bigger part in learning to write is done by the parents?


 
Isn't that true in any language (or better: in any country)? If the parents don't care about their children's spellings, I guess teachers can't help them either. Parents are often enough encouraged to look out for how their children are at school, aren't they?


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## Outsider

Here's what I remember from school:

a, e, i, o, u

Pronounced á, é, i, ó, u, although each letter has more possible pronunciations. But most people caught up to that soon enough.

pa, pe, pi, po, pu (prononced pá, pé, pi, pó, pu)
ta, te, ti, to, tu (prononced tá, té, ti, tó, tu)
And so on.

Then the hard ones, like:

sa, se, si, so su

This consonant actually has other pronunciations in Portuguese, but, again, we learned those with practice and reading. And then there was

ga, gue, gui, go, gu

You have to add a "u" to make the same sound, in Portuguese.

Am I rambling?... I fear I might be.


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## Whodunit

Outsider, do I remember incorrectly that the pronunciation of the "s" in "isto" and "este" are different? Or is it a Portuguese-Brazilian difference?

I read that "isto" sounds like [isto] and I heard that "este" like [eʃte]. If that is true, how can you teach pupils the difference?


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## Outsider

I don't teach this myself, Whodunit! I was just remembering my student's days. 

The "s" is pronounced the same way in "isto" and "este". However, in Portugal most people pronounce this "s" as a German "sch" (in Brazil it's different). Of course this is not the same as the "default" pronunciation that our teachers used first, which was "ss" (as in "sapo", "salsa", etc.)

How did we learn to associate this letter with the two pronunciations? That's a good question, actually. I don't remember ever being very confused by this, but then I was a good student.

But you have something similar in German, where the "s" has three pronunciations, "ss", [z] (voiced "s", not "tz"), and "sch" before some consonants. How was it for you?


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## .   1

BlueWolf said:


> Interessing, do you mean that in English the bigger part in learning to write is done by the parents?


Most certainly.
I would be surprised if this is not the case in all languages and cultures.
I am of the opinion that children are most able to learn such subjects before the age of five.
Writing is a part of language and children aquire most of their language skills prior to age five.
I am sure that there are exceptions but I would proffer the suggestion that any child who does not know how to read and write prior to attending school will be constantly striving to catch up with those who possess the skills already.

.,,


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## BlueWolf

. said:


> Most certainly.
> I would be surprised if this is not the case in all languages and cultures.
> I am of the opinion that children are most able to learn such subjects before the age of five.
> Writing is a part of language and children aquire most of their language skills prior to age five.
> I am sure that there are exceptions but I would proffer the suggestion that any child who does not know how to read and write prior to attending school will be constantly striving to catch up with those who possess the skills already.
> 
> .,,



None of us (me and my mates) was able to read before first grade, at the age of six. I'm truly surprised to find out this. My parents helped me after, hearing while I was reading, but the biggest part was taught me at school, not at home.


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## .   1

BlueWolf said:


> None of us (me and my mates) was able to read before first grade, at the age of six. I'm truly surprised to find out this. My parents helped me after, hearing while I was reading, but the biggest part was taught me at school, not at home.


Did your parents regularly read to you prior to your attending shcool?

.,,


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## BlueWolf

. said:


> Did your parents regularly read to you prior to your attending shcool?



They did, but I didn't look at the text. I didn't know anything about reading before going to school.


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## .   1

BlueWolf said:


> They did, but I didn't look at the text. I didn't know anything about reading before going to school.


What were you looking at when your parents were reading to you?

.,,


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## BlueWolf

. said:


> What were you looking at when your parents were reading to you?



What did I have to look at? If there were pictures, the pictures, otherwise the room!


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## .   1

BlueWolf said:


> What did I have to look at? If there were pictures, the pictures, otherwise the room!


Possibly but I have never seen a child being read to who was not staring at the page containing the text.

.,,


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## maxiogee

. said:


> What were you looking at when your parents were reading to you?
> 
> .,,



For my part I can remember being read to.
Sat on the parental lap I watched my mother's mouth and eyes - unless there were pictures in the book.
My son tended to do the same, or to settle back, cuddle in the crook of my arm, and do his best to go asleep, as I read to him.


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## BlueWolf

. said:


> Possibly but I have never seen a child being read to who was not staring at the page containing the text.



The page isn't so interesting if you can't read. However a typical situation fro reading to the babies is before they went to sleep. I don't think they stared at the page if they're lying on the bed.


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## jinti

I used to teach literacy to adult beginners with no previous schooling (or precious little, like 6 months of school 40 years ago....)

We worked with phonics and with whole language (that is, with sounding out words and with recognizing whole words).  The combination worked pretty well because some of the most common words in English don't follow phonetic patterns, but it's the phonetic patterns that let you read unfamiliar words.  And a lot of the longer words that beginners are nervous about even attempting are actually quite phonetic, once you get some patterns down.  It's true that there are many patterns, but they're not all equally common and you don't need to master them all at once.

I also taught ESL Literacy, which was English, reading and writing for people who spoke no English and who didn't read or write in any language.  We did pretty well with a similar approach.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> I don't teach this myself, Whodunit! I was just remembering my student's days.


 
By "you," I wasn't referring to you personally, but to all Portuguese persons. How would you teach it to your children, to foreigners, and so on ...



> The "s" is pronounced the same way in "isto" and "este". However, in Portugal most people pronounce this "s" as a German "sch" (in Brazil it's different). Of course this is not the same as the "default" pronunciation that our teachers used first, which was "ss" (as in "sapo", "salsa", etc.)


 
Okay, so I must have listened to the Portuguese version of Portuguese, and not to the Brazilian, which I had actually assumed. 



> How did we learn to associate this letter with the two pronunciations? That's a good question, actually. I don't remember ever being very confused by this, but then I was a good student.


 
Haha, that's not very fair. I could tell the same, but how should teachers explain something, if they always repeated "Well, that's just the way it is. I was never confused by this, but to be honest, I was a good student." 



> But you have something similar in German, where the "s" has three pronunciations, "ss", [z] (voiced "s", not "tz"), and "sch" before some consonants. How was it for you?


 
Do we really have three ways to pronounce the "s?" Well, as far as I know, it's only pronounced like the English "sh," if _ch_, _p_, or _t_ follows. I explained it some posts before.

It is pronounce like as a sharp s when it is at the end of a word or appears as _ss_. This should be no problem. It is always pronounced softly when it introduces a word, except in some foreign words. So, this should be easy, too.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> By "you," I wasn't referring to you personally, but to all Portuguese persons. How would you teach it to your children, to foreigners, and so on ...


O.K., but I can only speak about what I know. There have been many changes to the education system, lately, and I don't know how they're teaching this now.



Whodunit said:


> Do we really have three ways to pronounce the "s?" Well, as far as I know, it's only pronounced like the English "sh," if _ch_, _p_, or _t_ follows. I explained it some posts before.


Yes, definitely three:

1. voiceless [s] ("ss")
2. voiced [z] (like an English "z")
3. postalveolar (like German "sch", or English "sh")

1. Examples: Hans, uns, Haus, etc.
2. Examples: Salzburg, sie, sein
3. Examples: Stuttgart, Stein, Sprache



Whodunit said:


> It is pronounce like as a sharp s when it is at the end of a word or appears as _ss_. This should be no problem. It is always pronounced softly when it introduces a word, except in some foreign words. So, this should be easy, too.


Yes, there are similar rules for the pronunciation in Portuguese. I was a little lazy/tired, the other day. You can predict how to pronounce the "s" from its position within a syllable.

At the beginning: [s] (voiceless)
Between vowels: [z] (voiced)
At the end (in Portugal): "sh" or "zh", depending on whether the next consonant is voiceless or voiced, respectively.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Yes, definitely three:
> 
> 1. Examples: Hans, uns, Haus, etc.
> 2. Examples: Salzburg, sie, sein
> 3. Examples: Stuttgart, Stein, Sprache


 
Your examples match my explanations. 

1. at the end of a word, the "s" is always voiceless (any consonant is voiceless at the end of a word in German)
2. at the beginning of a word, the "s" is always voiced
3. if a _ch_, _t_, or _p_ follows, the "s" is pronounced like English "sh." I explained it in this (ff.) post.


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## Outsider

What about "Wiesbaden"? The "s" is voiced in this word, isn't it?


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> How did we learn to associate this letter with the two pronunciations? That's a good question, actually. I don't remember ever being very confused by this, but then I was a good student.



Actually since my question was about learning to _write_ (and not to read), I'm more interested about the opposite. How do you learn to associate sounds that can be written with different letters? For example, in Portuguese the sound "s" can be written as _ç, çc, ss _or _x_, can't it?


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## jinti

In my adult ESL Literacy classes, students always found it odd -- and annoying -- that the same sound could be written a couple different ways.

For the very beginning students (learning the alphabet), I used to give quizzes. I would say a word and they would write down its first sound. So if I said _garage_, they would write _g_. When I gave them a word like _capital_, I accepted both _c_ and _k_ as correct, because we were not spelling whole words (that was too advanced); we were associating letters and sounds. I gave many such words because without fail, one student would say the answer was _c_ and another would disagree that it was _k_, and the resulting discussion would reinforce the idea that there was more than one way to write the sound.

Later, when they were more advanced and writing whole words, they would hesitate over whether to use c/k, or c/s, or g/j, etc. I had each one keep a list of their own such words as a personal dictionary. That gave them extra reading and writing practice, but it also helped them keep track of the spellings of words they wanted to use a long time before they were able to use a dictionary.

Lack of sound is another difficulty in English, too. The rule about silent _e_ changing the pronunciation of the preceding vowel (_fat_ vs. _fate_), was too advanced for the first level of beginners, so when they asked why there was an extra _e_, I just joked that it was there for good luck.  They got the real rule in the next level of the class.


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## Outsider

BlueWolf said:


> Actually since my question was about learning to _write_ (and not to read), I'm more interested about the opposite. How do you learn to associate sounds that can be written with different letters? For example, in Portuguese the sound "s" can be written as _ç, çc, ss _or _x_, can't it?


Yes, and that's a good question. Although several spellings for [s] are possible, I think the most common are:

"s" at the beginning of syllables;
"ss" between vowels;
"c/ç" between vowels, and at the beginning of syllables (excluding word-initial ç).

So you just need to memorize which words take "ss" and which ones take "c/ç", plus the minute number of exceptions. There are some recurring patterns; for example, the ending [sãw] in abstract nouns, which usually corresponds to English _-tion_ (Spanish _-ción_, etc.), is spelled with a "ç", _-ção_. Nouns of this kind ending in _-ssão_ are fairly rare.

Another clue you have is that the same spelling is used for [s] in words of the same semantic family:

_na*ç*ão, na*ç*ões, na*c*ional, na*c*ionalista_ (nation, nations, national, nationalist)

So, as long as you know how to spell one word in a family, you can spell all others.


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