Owen's 'English' Homework

Last night, Owen was sat at the kitchen table with his English/Spellings homework in front of him. After about fifteen minutes, he came to us because he did not understand what he was supposed to do. He had already put a bunch of words into alphabetical order without fail but then there was a part two to the homework. He had to 'circle the unstressed vowel' in the words. Okay, easy enough, they are learning about primary and secondary stress in words. So I look at it and get immediately irritated because I figure that one must pronounce them in a English accent to get them correct. Craig goes in to look at it. It turns out that the task is not actually to mark stress on weak syllables, it is actually to mark the syllables that ARE NOT PRONOUNCED! What a bizarre homework assignment.
For example, in Brit-speak the word 'literally' is pronounced "litruhlee", deleting the 'e', so Owen had to circle the 'e'. Some other words were:
stationary - delete the 2nd 'a' to say "stationree"
immediately - delete the 'a' to say "immeejitlee"
February - delete the 'a' to say "februree"

It reminded me of how we say the days of the week in Baltimore even though it's a different process:
"Mondee, Tuesdee, Wenzdee, Thursdee, Friday, Saturday, Sundee, hon!"
But we don't teach this in English class!

So then I started thinking about the purpose of this homework assignment and I realized it wasn't a pronunciation exercise, it was actually a backward way to teach a child how to spell the words and realize (excuse me realiSe) that even though a sound isn't pronounced, it is there in the spelling and it is a pretty systematic rule, thankfully.

Then Craig and I started thinking about other dialectal rules that are not taught in Spellings class. Our favoUrite is the rule we call "extra r". If a word ends in a vowel, the English often add an /r/ sound to the end. For example, my friend Lisa's name is pronounced "Liser", 'India' goes to "injier", 'Alabama' is "ahlahbahmer" and pretty much my most fave word is 'dilemma' pronounced "die-lemmer". Lately Tunisia has been in the news and it is pronounced "toonisier". What we find the funniest is that if a word actually has an /r/ in it's spelling preceded by a vowel, the English DON'T pronounce it i.e., "dah-ling" for 'darling'. They do pronounce an "American" /r/ if it's in a blend, as in the word 'tree' or at the beginning of a word except some people pronounce the /r/ funny like they have an articulation issue (a funny w/r sound) when in reality they don't. That's a whole 'nother dialectal issue.

Then finally, Craig was talking about a meeting he attended yesterday and how the speaker kept saying the word "beeter" over and over again and how he had no clue what she was talking about until his mind clicked with an "A-HA!" moment. She was talking about a system that was labeled 'something something B'.
B = beta = "beeter" in Brit speak!
Now the Greek letters have been around for like ages, litruhlee, and the whole world pronounces them the same.
Except in Britain who dares to be different.
And they say WE talk funny!