{"id":1566,"date":"2013-01-31T16:51:21","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T00:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/?p=1566"},"modified":"2013-01-31T16:51:21","modified_gmt":"2013-02-01T00:51:21","slug":"a-as-in-hay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/?p=1566","title":{"rendered":"A as in Hay"},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently got a comment about this exercise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nOh my gosh!<\/p>\n

“the dog has A<\/strong> furry paw.” A as in HAY??<\/p>\n

I spent a lot of years in the elementary classroom trying to soften that pronunciation to “uh” instead. Middle school and HS too!<\/p>\n

Robert<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It could be our Midwestern accent, but there are many occasions where we prefer the long a to a short one.<\/p>\n

Long a used for emphasis (or surprise).<\/strong>
\nWe had a wonderful time at your party.
\nI hadn’t seen her for a while so I gave her a big hug.
\nI didn\u2019t study and I still got a B on the test!
\nGuess what? I got a car for my birthday!<\/p>\n

Long a used in enumeration to indicate just one of something.<\/strong>
\nWe took seven bats and a ball to practice.
\nShe had pens, paper, some textbooks, and a sandwich in her backpack.<\/p>\n

Almost always when starting a sentence.<\/strong>
\nA speeding car almost hit the kids.
\nA penny saved is a penny earned.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, it just sounds better to use a long a.<\/strong>
\nCongress met on New Year\u2019s day to avoid a fiscal crisis.
\nThis is a fine mess you\u2019ve got us in Ollie.<\/p>\n

In this particular case, we were probably just being consistent with the short phrase.
\nWe are trying to get the initial p pronunciation and the short phrase is: a furry paw
\nSince it has a long a, when we said the sentence, we probably just used the same intonation. Although, we could have unconsciously been applying the first rule, and used the long a for emphasis.<\/p>\n

And possibly.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I suspect the real reason I said “ae” is because when you read that many sentences sometimes you switch to the decoding only mode and don’t say it as if you were speaking it. It is easy to over articulate as well. I have a note from a teacher in college that gave me an A- because of my “over precise speech.” Think I might still frame that!
\nM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We recently got a comment about this exercise. Oh my gosh! “the dog has A furry paw.” A as in HAY?? I spent a lot of years in the elementary classroom trying to soften that pronunciation to “uh” instead. Middle school and HS too! Robert   It could be our Midwestern accent, but there are … Continue reading A as in Hay<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-grammar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellgolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}