The ph Group of Words: How to Enliven Your Work in Language

The teacher of language should do everything in her power to introduce a feeling of interest, even of enjoyment, into her work. As the end of the year approaches, it is profitable to take up certain groups of words for review. Among these groups those with the diphthongs ph, th, and ch are especially important, because such words are usually hard and many of them are puzzling. I shall divide this discussion into sections dealing with the varying lengths of words from one to six syllables, respectively. Teachers can then select the parts most suited to their classes. The diphthong ph is from the Greek letter phi, the twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet, and the English equivalent ph is pronounced f. Tell your pupils about this Greek origin of the ph combination, even draw it on the board (q), and let them expect to find most of these words coming from the Greek language. There is one exception to this rule of pronouncing the ph as fthe word Stephen, which is pronounced as if written Sti'v'n. In British usage the word nephew is pronounced with the soft sound of v (nev'u); here in America the preference is for the accepted sound of ph--nef' u. In dealing with these separate groups of words, place the list upon the blackboard where all can see it. Next, pronounce each word carefully, and have the class as a whole and as individuals pronounce it. Then define the words, where possible drawing attention to the derivation and illustrating the most common use in a sentence-example. It always pays to introduce into the discussion something interesting about the origin of the word, its application, or just an interesting story that touches it. This helps greatly to deepen the class memory of the word.