Is 7 An Unlucky Number In China

Other numbers with different meanings in Chinese are 0,1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Zero means everything or nothing because it is limitless. One means the first because it is the most simple number but also the most complex in Chinese culture. It has the meaning of beginning, loneliness, and single.

In most cases, Chinese people consider it a lucky number because things in China mostly come in pairs but otherwise people use the number to describe someone as stupid or dumb. Three is a lucky number because it sounds similar to birth. Number 3 is used a lot in Chinese history, culture and a lot more. There are Three Halls of the Forbidden City in Beijeng and there are three gorges in the Yangtze River.Five is a neutral number in Chinese culture. It is lucky because it's related to the emperor of China.

There are five blessings in China, wealth, happiness, longevity, luck and prosperity. Also in Chinese astrology, there are five elements such as metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. In mandarin, it has the same pronunciation of the word that means nothing in Chinese so it basically means that it has a negative meaning in Chinese. It also is used to say "I" because of the similar pronunciation in Chinese. In Chinese culture, lucky numbers can bring good luck and fortune to their life. Chinese people usually choose favorable numbers when important dates come around like choosing a date for engagement, a date for a wedding and choosing a date to buy a house.

Is 7 A Bad Luck Number In China 4 is well known to be an unlucky number because 四 sounds similar to 死 (sǐ), which means "death" in Chinese. People will go to extremes based on superstitions of the number 4. Houses and apartments that have 4 in the address number will sell for much less than ones without. Mentioning the number four to an ill family member is considered to be highly offensive, and giving anything with 4 on it to someone can be seen as a death threat.

Like 5, 7 has both positive and negative connotations in Chinese culture. For the positive side, 七 sounds like both 起 (qǐ), which means "start" or "rise", and also 气 (qì), which means "vital energy". Seven is also seen as a lucky number for relationships. The Qixi Festival (七夕節), also known as the Chinese Valentine's Day, falls on the 7th day of the 7th month in the lunar calendar. The 7th month is also known as the "ghost month" in China, where ghosts and spirits are believed to rise from hell to visit earth.

While ghosts may be seen as omens, the ghost festival in the 7th month is widely celebrated. 7 may also be considered unlucky because 七 sounds like 欺 , meaning "cheat". Every country and culture has its own superstitions, especially when it comes to numbers.

In the US, for example, the number 13 is considered bad luck, and it's why you'll rarely see a 13th floor in hotels and some taller buildings. On the other hand, the number 7 is considered lucky, especially when there are three 7s in a row. Certain numbers are considered lucky, and others unlucky.

The luckiest number in Chinese culture is eight, as the Chinese for eight sounds like the word for 'lucky'. Four, conversely is a very unlucky number as in Chinese it sounds like the word for death. Thus Chinese adhering to the customs try to avoid the number four in, for example, car number plates, house addresses etc. In China, it is customary to regard even numbers as being more auspicious than odd ones. So, gifts are given in even numbers for the celebration of all occasions.

No. 8 has long been regarded as the luckiest number in Chinese culture. With pronunciation of 'Ba' in Chinese, no. 8 sounds similar to the word 'Fa', which means to make a fortune. It contains meanings of prosperity, success and high social status too, so all business men favor it very much. Moreover, in some areas of China, people prefer to pay much more money for a telephone number with 8 in it.

They also favor residences on the eighth floor of buildings. In 1990s, a vehicle identification number with 8 was once auctioned off for 5 million Hong Kong dollars. Because of its negative association with death, most people consider this number to be so unlucky that many buildings in China do not even have a "fourth" floor.

The number 4 is also unlikely to appear on house/door numbers and car license plates. Whenever, possible, many people will also try hard to avoid choosing telephone numbers that contain the number 4. Is well known to be an unlucky number because 四 sounds similar to 死 (sǐ), which means "death" in Chinese. Did you know that if you press a Chinese elevator button to go to the 50th floor of a building, you may actually only be going to the 35th floor? This is because many buildings in China not only omit the 13th floor, but are also missing any floor containing the number 4, which is considered to be the unluckiest number in Chinese culture.

The Chinese have many superstitions about numbers, often related to similar-sounding words in the Chinese language, which are called homophones. 6 (六), pronounced liu, is considered lucky as it sounds like the word that means 'to flow', and can indicate smooth progress in life. Similar to 8, 6 is preferred in number plates and phone numbers. When a couple gets engaged, the man customarily offers a gift to the girl's family which is usually money and this gift signifies a harmonious life for the couple. In many East Asian cultures, including China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, the number 4 is considered unlucky. If you step onto an elevator, you probably won't see a button indicating the fourth floor because most apartment buildings and hospitals skip the number altogether.

In Beijing, it's not even possible to get a vehicle license plate that has the number 4 on it. And in Singapore, a luxury carmaker had to change the name of the Alfa Romeo model 144 because citizens were scared to buy it. It's the same reason Nokia phone models don't start with the number 4. In conclusion words are very important in Chinese culture because they have different meanings.

Words have specific meanings and sometimes they are luck or unlucky. Such as the numbers four and seven are unlucky and Chinese people avoid those numbers often because they think it is bad luck to say those numbers. Just like in the United States the number thirteen is disliked by most people in America. The numbers six, eight, and nine are very lucky in Chinese culture because they all have specific meanings. For example, number six is lucky to them because it means "smooth" and they believe by saying that number it means to them that everything will go smoothly.

Number eight is lucky because it means "rich" so when Chinese people say the number eight they believe it means being rich or wealthy. Number nine is lucky because it means everlasting so they think they are everlasting when they say that number. And these are the lucky and unlucky numbers in Chinese. The result is a system of superstitions which regards certain numbers as bringers of good luck or of accidents. In Vietnamese culture, lucky numbers can bring good luck and fortune to their life.

The pronunciation of the number four in Japanese is very similar to the word death, and because of this, four has been considered bad luck in Japan, Korea and China. It is considered very bad luck to give a gift that is made up of four pieces to someone. Many buildings in heavily Asian areas do not have a fourth floor, much like the way North American cultures treat the number 13.

4 is renowned for being an unlucky number because it sounds similar to a word which means 'death' in Chinese. Just like the number 13, people will go to extremes to avoid the number 4, based solely on superstitions. For example, personal number plates, house numbers and product names with the number 4 in tend to be dodged. Often, numbers that are visible in the background of an image might be innocent in one country but provoke fear in another. For example, a photo of a soccer player with a big number 17 on his jersey might look fine to audiences in most parts of the world, but in Italy this number is considered very unlucky. In fact, at the winter Olympics in Turin, the 17th curve on the bobsled track was referred to as "Senza Nome" instead of referring to it with the unlucky number 17.

Also, make sure to check the number of people or items you are displaying in a given picture — the number can be viewed as unlucky in some markets. For some Vietnamese, it's considered bad luck to have 3 people in photos. In China, numerology is more than just a superstition, it's a lifestyle. 'Eight,' for example, is considered a lucky number, so lucky, in fact, that people will splash millions to have a string of eights on their license plates or in their phone numbers.

Culture Trip explores which numbers are good and which are bad and what that might mean for you. But the number four is considered unlucky because it sounds a lot like the word for "death," and as a result Chinese buildings often lack a fourth floor . Three lucky numbers are overrepresented on plate endings, with 12 or 13 percent each. Chinese' fondness for 8 can be seen in many other cases, such as house numbers, phone numbers, number plates, wedding dates, the date for opening a business, and so on. 8 is considered lucky and favored by Chinese because it holds meaning in both traditional and modern cultures. In Chinese culture, people believe that lucky numbers can bring them good luck and fortune.

Every culture has a number considered unlucky because of superstitions. The reason behind the fear of the number four, known as tetraphobia, lies in the way it sounds. As Max Chang wrote in a 2017 Next Shark article, the number 4 is unlucky for Chinese because the word is a homonym to a Chinese word for death. So imagine, having a phone number that begins with "444" sounds like death-death-death.

That is why the Chinese will request custom phone numbers for their businesses or homes, to avoid the number 4. On the other hand, it's considered fortunate if you have a phone number with an 8. 6 sounds like the Chinese word "liu" which means "flowing, smooth, or frictionless". As such, 6 implies that "everything will go smoothly" and is considered lucky especially if it comes in multiples. Thus, it is particularly appealing to business owners, who are willing to pay extra to occupy buildings at addresses containing the number 6.

Four is the unluckiest number in Chinese numerology. The romanisation of the number is 'si', which sounds scarily similar to the word 'si', meaning 'death'. As such, the number should be avoided at any cost.

The number is considered inauspicious in Japan and Korea as well, where the words 'four' and 'death' remain homophonous. 6 is pronounced "liu" in Mandarin Chinese, and this sounds like the Mandarin Chinese word meaning "flowing, smooth, or frictionless". Therefore, the number 6 has the meaning of "everything will go smoothly" and is considered lucky especially where it occurs in multiples. In feng shui, the number 6 represents authority and power. 3 (三), pronounced san, is considered lucky due to its similarity in sound to the word that means birth.

Additionally, this number represents the three stages in the life of humans - birth, marriage, death - that adds to its importance in Chinese culture. In China, lucky numbers have pronunciations that are similar to words with lucky meanings. Number 8 holds huge significance as a lucky number. To a lesser extent 2, 6, and 9 are considered lucky.

As well as these general number superstitions, fengshui and the Chinese zodiac dictate different number luck for different places/people. Thus, some buildings in East Asia omit floors and room numbers containing 4, similar to the Western practice of some buildings not having a 13th floor because 13 is considered unlucky. Where East Asian and Western cultures blend, such as in Hong Kong, it is possible in some buildings that the thirteenth floor along with all the floors with 4s to be omitted. Thus a building whose top floor is numbered 100 would in fact have just eighty one floors. Similarly in Vietnamese, the number 4 (四) is called tứ in Sino-Vietnamese, which sounds like tử (死) in Vietnamese. The numbers 3, 5, and 8 are generally considered to be lucky, while 4 is considered unlucky.

These traditions are not unique to Chinese culture, with other countries with a history of Han characters also having similar beliefs stemming from these concepts. They often used lucky numbers in their buildings and designs, while avoiding unlucky numbers. They also have a saying "good things come in pairs". Three - The number three is considered lucky because it sounds like the Chinese word for "birth". So if a cell phone number, a house number or the registration number of a car has the 8, people think it is a lucky sign.

The number 4 on the other hand, is considered unlucky. It is so because the number 4 in Chinese has the pronunciation similar to the word 'death'. 5sounds like the Chinese word for "not", indicating that tasks and goals may not be achieved. However, if combined with another unlucky number, it can bring a lucky effect, e.g. if combined with 4 to become 54, then it would mean "cannot die".

But if used together with a lucky number such as in 528, it would mean "no good fortune". In such cases, an understanding of the Chinese language would come in handy. Alternatively, the number 3 is generally considered lucky due to its similarity in sound to the word of birth.

This number represents the three stages of life of humans - birth, marriage and death, which adds to its importance in Chinese culture. But in cultures in Asia, the pronunciation of 666 sounds very much like the phrase, "things going smoothly," and it is considered to be very lucky. The numbers which exert a bad impact on one's life are called unlucky numbers.

Unlucky numbers depend on someone's belief or experience with that particular number. Your apartment number, your cell phone number, your license plate—all are avenues to invite good luck or protect against bad luck in Chinese culture. Chinese numerology is deeply rooted in symbolism and language.

Spanish Nouns That Begin With K

Research that directly compares or validates specific instructional methods is minima). But we do have some solid footing to draw on; research has identified the linguistic proficiencies that are essential to spelling and the developmental phases that children typically progress through as they learn to spell. As Marcia Henry suggested, every layer of language organization merits attention in the elementary and middle school curriculum.

Likewise, older children who are behind in spelling and/or reading may need to return to some lower level content they have not yet mastered. The following list provides the main content that I believe should be emphasized in each grade, but it does not list the years in which content should be introduced or the years in which some content may need to be reviewed. As a general rule, many spelling concepts are introduced early and then are studied in greater depth in later grades. One of the main reasons that English seems so irregular is that we have lots of different spellings for the same sound.

For example, the /k/ sound can be spelled with several different letters and letter combinations, such as k , c , ck , qu , and ch . Modern English has been influenced by several core languages, primarily Anglo- Saxon, Norman French , Latin, and Greek. A complete discussion of what needs to be covered in each grade would be much too long for this article, but brief explanations of these topics and some teaching suggestions are presented in the section below.

As a general guide for covering the proposed content, about minutes daily or 30 minutes three times per week should be allocated to spelling instruction. Application in writing should be varied but continual. Although instruction in irregular words needs to start early so that children don't memorize the wrong spelling, it should not supersede instruction in the common phoneme-grapheme correspondences. Irregular words are learned most easily by students who already know common phoneme-grapheme correspondences and who can explicitly analyze the speech-to-print mapping system. This is because irregular words have some regular correspondences, and also because a good speller makes mental comparisons between what a spelling ought to be and what it is.

Awareness of phoneme-grapheme correspondences, regular and irregular, is the "glue that holds the word in memory". By then, scribes and writers of dictionaries had determined that English words would not end with those letters because they were easy to visually confuse with i and u, respectively, the letters from which each was derived. Likewise, because j is not an option at the ends of words, the speech sound /j/ may be spelled with either –ge or –dge. English uses –dge right after an accented short vowel. Because if it were not for the extra consonant protection of d, the letter e could reach back over the single consonant g and make the vowel say its long vowel sound (badge, nudge vs. wage, huge).

As you read about these principles, keep in mind that this part of the article is designed to help teachers better understand the nature and structure of the English spelling system. This is essential background knowledge for teachers of reading, spelling, and writing. Section two of this article offers a way of breaking that system into key content for instruction in kindergarten through seventh grade. Those of us who can spell reasonably well take for granted the role that spelling plays in daily life.

In a literate society, conventional spelling is expected and anything beyond a few small errors is equated with ignorance and incompetence. In fact, the National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools, and Colleges reported that 80 percent of the time an employment application is doomed if it is poorly written or poorly spelled. Why does spelling appear on the one hand to be simple, something any reasonably intelligent person should be able to do, but on the other hand, cause so many students academic grief?

How can spelling be taught so that it will support reading instruction as well as help students understand how the spelling system works and see the ways in which spelling is predictable? Guided discovery with word sorting and teacher questioning is a powerful approach for helping students understand spellings that depend on the position of a sound in a word or established conventions (like –ve). For example, the –ge and –dge pattern for the phoneme /j/ lends itself to word sorting and guided discovery. Once they see the pattern, they should be ready to learn the rule. Many young readers are puzzled by the rules and exceptions of spelling. Research shows that learning to spell and learning to read rely on much of the same underlying knowledge.

Learn more about the relationships between letters and sounds and how a proper understanding of spelling mechanics can lead to improved reading. Direct teaching about the meaningful parts of words begins with the most common inflections, but then extends to prefixes, suffixes, and roots of Latin origin. Prefixes and suffixes have stable spellings and meanings. Suffixes such as –ly, –al, –ment, –less, –ness, –ful, –ous also signify the part of speech of the word to which they are added. Roots such as nat can be studied through families of words, such as natal, native, nation, national, multinational, international, nationalistic, etc. This is especially helpful in grades four through eight to help students develop a larger vocabulary.

Spanish Nouns That Start With A K A sample exercise on the prefix super- and the prepositions over and under appears on the left. Spelling by explicit phoneme-grapheme mapping requires the learner to match the letters/letter combinations in a word to the speech sounds they represent. One approach is to use a simple grid; each box of the grid represents a phoneme. As these examples show, the teacher selects a word and gives children an empty grid with a box for each phoneme. The teacher says the word, then the students repeat it, segment the sounds, and write a grapheme in each box. Since the speech sounds in English can be spelled so many ways, how do we know when to use a particular spelling?

For those of us who cannot just "absorb" the right spelling as we mainly we need to practice recognizing and writing groups of words that share a given pattern. "Rules" are often predictable letter sequences that can be learned with a combination of pattern study and memorization. The next two principles provide a framework that makes the patterns a little easier to learn. Content words in academic text are commonly of Latin origin and composed of prefixes, roots, and/or suffixes. Their study is productive for reading comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary development .

However, more complex words or word parts derived from Latin often change either the pronunciation or spelling of the prefix and/or root. For example, collaborate is related to the root labor . The prefix col is a changed form of com , designed to blend easily into the root. It's best to organize word study around a common root once prefixes and suffixes are recognized (Henry, 2003; Templeton et al., 1992). I suggest introducing irregular words at the rate of about three to five per week, beginning with words the children write most often and also tend to misspell.

If a child learns a basic high frequency word the wrong way, unlearning it once a habit has been formed is more difficult than learning it the right way the first time. Spellings for words such as they, went, who, and said should not be "invented" or they will be misspelled ad infinitum. If students are very poor spellers, concentrate instruction on words they are most likely to write. Five years ago, the National Reading Panel omitted spelling from its list of five essential components of a comprehensive reading lesson . As a result, the NRP implied that spelling would develop in response to appropriate reading instruction. Today, most of our regular sound-symbol correspondences come from the Anglo-Saxon layer of language .

Ironically, most of our irregular spellings come from Anglo-Saxon as well. Because the spelling of a word usually changes much more slowly than its pronunciation, some of our oldest and most common words have retained spellings that represent how they were pronounced eight or 10 centuries ago. In addition to the consonants in Table 1, we need to take into account the labial-velar and palatal semivowels and , corresponding to the letters v and i in initial and intervocalic positions. Even though these sounds were not originally consonantal in Latin, they subsequently became so in those positions, a development which is addressed in Section 2 below. The letter d basically sounds like an English d but is a bit softer in Spanish. At the end of a word, it is not stressed as it is in English.

Say the word "paid" out loud and hear the strength of the d at the end. In Spanish, any d at the end of the word is barely pronounced. Say ciudad without the d at the end and you'll sound like a native. Remember, the lack of double consonants makes spelling easy. Although children should begin practicing breaking words into syllables in first grade, by third grade they should be ready to master syllabication. Children's spelling should be greatly improved if they learn the six basic syllable types and how they affect spelling.

For example, once children learn about the open, closed, and consonant –le syllable types, they can reliably predict when they should double consonants in words that end with a consonant –le syllable. When an open syllable is combined with a consonant –le syllable–as in cable, bugle, and title–there is no doubled consonant. In contrast, when a closed syllable is combined with a consonant –le syllable – as in dabble, topple, and little–a double consonant results. As they are learning the letter sounds, children also need to learn the letter names. In kindergarten, fluency with letter names and forms facilitates spelling and is an indicator that children are likely to develop oral reading fluency. Older poor spellers should be asked to write the alphabet in order,accurately, and quickly.

Since the advent of word processing and spell checkers, some educators have argued that spelling instruction is unnecessary. It's true that spell checkers work reasonably well for those of us who can spell reasonably well — but rudimentary spelling skills are insufficient to use a spell checker. Students who are very poor spellers do not produce the close approximations of target words necessary for the spell checker to suggest the right word. In addition, words that have an irregular plural form include this plural.

Some of these words will be familiar to Spanish language learners because of their foreign roots. Paying attention to whether nouns are masculine or feminine and noting slight changes in spelling (e.g., kilometer – kilómetro) will help add these words to your working vocabulary. I knew that children should be taught phoneme awareness, but needed proof to provide to my granddaughter's public school psychologist, teachers and administrators.

This article concisely indicates that a child's phonological processing knowledge is not solely dictated by the child's intelligence. It clearly indicates that phoneme/grapheme knowledge is a skill that is taught in a systematic way for children to realize the true success in reading and spelling, which both concepts rely on the other. Because it helps fix phoneme-grapheme correspondences in children's minds, this technique supports children's spelling, reading, and writing development. It should be taught in first grade, but it is also especially helpful with second-and third-grade students who missed the fundamentals in the earlier grades. Our society expects that any educated person can spell, yet literate adults commonly characterize themselves as poor spellers and make spelling mistakes.

Many children have trouble spelling, but we do not know how many, or in relation to what standard, because state accountability assessments seldom include a direct measure of spelling competence. Few state standards specify what, exactly, a student at each grade level should be able to spell, and most subsume spelling under broad topics such as written composition and language proficiency. State writing tests may not even score children on spelling accuracy, as they prefer to lump it in with other "mechanical" skills in the scoring rubrics. Because Spanish is a much more phonetically consistent language than English, Spanish words almost always sound the way they are spelled. You can use this phonetic knowledge to pronounce long, multi-syllable words that otherwise might be overwhelming. Rosetta Stone offers an effective way to learn Spanish words and phrases, and getting the pronunciation just right is a snap with TruAccent®, Rosetta Stone's patented speech recognition technology.

Open syllables end with a long vowel sound that is spelled with a single vowel letter ; closed syllables have a short vowel and end with a consonant . For the English speaker learning Spanish as a second language, most of these words pose little problem in spelling, as the differences between the two languages usually follow regular patterns. Below are listed the most common regular differences in spelling as well as a selection of words whose differences don't fit these patterns. The emphasis here is on words that are likely to cause spelling problems, not ordinary differences in the languages such as radio for the English "radium" and dentista for "dentist." The development of early medieval /ʎ/ in the above, intervocalic position into /ʒ/ implies convergence with the reflex of Latin initial i before back vowels, which also delivers /ʒ/ in Old Spanish.

Given that this latter /ʒ/ was originally a mid-palatal, presumably /ʝ/, this convergence is analogous to the modern phenomenon of žeísmo which exists in River Plate Spanish. The essence of žeísmo is a historical merger of the Castilian phonemes /ʎ/ and /ʝ/, but with /ʒ/ as the result, rather than the /ʝ/ which has this role in so-called yeísta dialects. To understand how the modern Spanish consonantal system came into being, one has to go back to the pronunciation of consonants in Latin. These fifteen letters are shown below using modern lower-case characters, which were not themselves used by the Romans, who used either capitals or the handwritten script known as Latin cursive . As illustrated in the timeline below, the story of the English language begins roughly 1,600 years ago with the decline of the Roman Empire. At its height, the Roman Empire stretched from Britain to North Africa to the Persian Gulf, but barbarian attackers forced the Empire to split apart and withdraw from its outposts.

After the Romans left Britain in 450 A.D., Germanic tribes known as Jutes, Angles, and Saxons invaded, pushing the Celtic inhabitants to the west. As Celtic and Latin words, roots, and pronunciations were absorbed into the invaders' Low West German languages, Anglo-Saxon — or Old English — was born. The most common, frequent words of Modern English — like those for animals, family members, numbers, common objects, emotions, and universal daily activities — are preserved from Anglo- Saxon. Some examples include goat, wife, mother, one, house, love, cook, and walk. Of the 100 words used most often in English, all can be traced to Anglo-Saxon origins. If you can spell in English, you have a head start with spelling in Spanish.

After all, thousands of words are English-Spanish cognates, words in both languages that are spelled identically or similarly because they share common origins. For the most part, these adoptions added words to the English language, but unlike the earlier changes in which spelling patterns were adopted (e.g., from cwene to queen), they did not affect already established spelling patterns. Thanks to extensive Latin influence on Spanish and English, these two languages have many corresponding spelling patterns. They come in handy when learning Spanish, as it means there are lots of cognates that you'll easily recognize and understand at first sight – though you do need to beware of falsos amigos. The letter j is always pronounced like the h in "hi" or "hollow." It is difficult to predict whether to use a g or j when you need to produce a word with the sound of the English h followed by an e or i. For example, jirafa and jefe are spelled with a j and giro and general are spelled with a g.

Focus on whether to use a j or a g when you first learn to spell the word. Words with the h sound in front of o, a, or u ( jota, Japón, and julio) are always spelled with a j because a g would not produce the h sound at all when followed by these letters. When looking for a word that starts with ll in the dictionary, don't forget that the Spanish side of some dictionaries will list words beginning with ll after the words beginning with a single l. This will also occur with the letter ch, which is also considered a single letter in Spanish and, in most dictionaries, may be found in its own section after the c section. Ch is easily pronounced (like the sound in "charm" or "Charles"), but, unlike English, ch is always pronounced the same way in Spanish. There are some important exceptions to the "no double letter" rule.

A single l sounds like the letter l you hear in English words. In English, instances of a double bb, nn, ss, ff, and so forth, are common. Spanish, on the other hand, does not have many words with double consonants of the same consonant letter.

You can find exceptions to this rule, however, with words containing ll, rr, cc, and nn; for example, diccionario, carro, connotación, and llave. Only the single letter f is used to make the f sound in Spanish. "word in spanish that starts with k" at online dictionary.

What is another word for word in spanish that starts with k? This is the right place where you will get the proper information. However, check word in spanish that starts with k at our online dictionary below. Reading Rockets is a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of research-based reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better.

Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in helping struggling readers build fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. Children need to learn to recognize these prefixes and suffixes as stable and meaningful word parts and they should begin learning their meanings. A typical activity for developing this skill is direct teaching of all consonant and vowel sounds, which is different from teaching the letters. The spellings of some sounds are governed by established conventions of letter sequences and patterns.

This latter fact is quite suggestive, as Latin f is likely to have originally been a voiceless bilabial sound, viz. /ɸ/, which which came to be replaced in the Latin of Rome by labiodental /f/. Andean Spanish, actually use [ɸ] in place of , and it is not implausible to suppose that these non-standard articulations are simply the continuation of an earlier, more generalized situation. Apart from /ɸ/, which was displaced by /f/ in the Late Middle Ages, all the consonants in Table 1 survive into Modern Spanish, but their distribution across the lexicon has changed in many cases.