‘Fog’ is white smoke

And other rather funny attempts to find simple meanings for three letter words

Our little munchkin is now old enough to learn to read. Great news! Since the first year at school is devoted entirely to phonics and how alphabets sound, he has grasped the concept of reading phonetically true words quite well. (Some good actually came from that exercise!) So, we can now read three-letter-words and a few ‘sight’ words (e.g. ‘is’, ‘the’, ‘was’, etc.) in English and two ‘akshar’ ones in Hindi. Amazing!

Here comes the catch — after reading each word, he will look up, expectantly, straight into your eyes, and ask you to explain what the word means. Now, I really appreciate the sincerity, but have you ever tried to meaningfully explain most of the three-letter (or two ‘akshar’) words to a four-year-old? If you have, we need to have a one-on-one chat to compare notes. If you haven’t, take it from us — it is one of the craziest experiences you’ll ever have, downright funny one moment to totally exasperating the next.

Apparently one of the easy ones to start with are those with the sound ‘a’ in the middle. We were in cruise control mode with ‘bat’, ‘cat’, ‘rat’, ‘sat’ and so on. Then came ‘sad’. For some reason, the reading picture book had George Pig in a crying pose next to sad. For him, the word ‘sad’ is now always accompanied by the explanation that George Pig is crying. And interestingly, when we reached ‘sob’, and our child was told it means ‘to cry’, he immediately associated it with George Pig being sad and crying. Interesting ways their little minds work.

The ‘o’ words were a similar experience. We did fairly okay with ‘hot’, ‘dot’, ‘cot’, ‘pot’, etc. and obviously struggled with the likes of ‘rot’ and ‘cod’. We also managed to make some cool explanations along the way — ‘fog’ is white smoke, ‘mob’ is too many people, so always wear a mask (these are Corona-times) and ‘hog’ is Daddy Pig (oink oink…)

Then came the ‘e’ family, with its bunch of ‘leg’, ‘peg’, ‘red’, ‘net’ and ‘met’. We got introduced to a few tricky ones here like ‘Ben’ — quickly categorized as ‘name of a boy (or girl)’. I still maintain differentiating between ‘vet’ and ‘wet’ has given me a few extra gray hair. Good that our child loves animals. V ‘vet’ was assigned animal doctor and the W counterpart associated with bath time.

The ‘i’ family however, proved to be a challenge. To date, I have not been able to explain ‘pip’ and ‘tip’ (any ‘tips’ would be greatly appreciated) and struggle with ‘dim’, ‘pit’, ‘nip’ and ‘wit’. This family created some weird associations as well. ‘Sip’ means juice for our child, as he would use a straw to ‘sip’ it; ‘lit’ is the little blue light that glows in the fountain at our complex, the one which we have to go and see every day. The picture for ‘fit’ has a man flexing his biceps — so ‘fit’ is somehow ‘man like a gorilla’ (not totally out of context though!). Last but not the least, every time he sees anyone walking a dog, he will say the dog ‘bit’ the blue pant of the man. A picture is worth a thousand words? Now I know what that means.

As we were painstakingly getting the hand of navigating through this, the Hindi reading started. And word associations like ‘tap’ and it means ‘nal’ in Hindi. ‘Not’ can be called ‘mat’, ‘man’ and ‘nar’ mean the same and the likes. Here, a lot of nonsense words also came into the picture. Teachers truly like to throw a spanner in the works sometimes. They would combine alphabets or ‘akshars’ simply for reading practice (phonics) and create words that do not mean anything!!! If that wasn’t all, there are some words that sound and mean the same in both languages — ‘bus’, ‘tub’ — so many different connections to be made.

By the time we came to the ‘u’ words, we thought we were pros. This group really tested us. Explaining ‘tug’ with actions invariably leads to an almost ripped-off t-shirt each time! Thank goodness we stuck to pictures while learning ‘bit’ and ‘hit’. I shudder to think what would happen each time we revised had we enacted those as well! ‘Dig’ was fine, but to explain to a kindergartner how ‘dug’ is different, is nearly impossible. For now, both mean the same. So do ‘mat’ and ‘rug’. ‘Mud’ was a breeze, but ‘dud’ killed it. And we are still in choppy waters with ‘hub’, ‘sub’ and ‘bum’. The best outcome of this lot — every time we come to ‘hug’, I get a nice big one! And it makes it all worthwhile.

As our child continues on his reading discovery, I have my own lessons to take away from helping him in this journey.

· Pictorial representation matters. Imagine having to explain ‘pit’, ‘pug’ or even ‘pin’ without being able to show how they look like. Add to that list Hindi words like ‘hala’ (plow), ‘mann’ (heart) and ‘dama’ (weight or breath). Not just for kids, even for us as mentors and enablers, having a picture to help explain the meaning comes in infinitely handy

· We take so many things for granted. I definitely never bothered about how to explain such basic and simple words, till I actually had to do it. And I faltered big time. It took all my ingenuity to figure out how to make the child understand what a ‘wig’ is, how ‘man’ is different from ‘men’ and why ‘Ben’, ‘Sam’, ‘Tim’ all mean the same (names of people). A kid’s mind works in curious ways and to satisfy their inquisitiveness is no mean task. Another question will definitely follow the first, so we had better sort our own understanding before we start explaining

After going through a few “my first” phonics and words books, our confidence has grown leaps and bounds. Regular practice has also helped. But we still have some ups and downs and unexpected turns to manoeuvre each time we pick up some new text. And the complete set of four-letter-words (and three ‘akshar’ ones in Hindi) are just beginning to peep around the corner! Wish us luck.