Reading and pronunciation

Or, Continuing my daughter's education.

Now that my eldest daughter is home again I'm showing her how to do reading lessons with her youngest brother -- the two oldest girls are teaching reading to the two youngest children while I'm having a Latin lesson with my eleven year old daughter. Yesterday's lesson went something like this:

Me: Now sound out this word.
Little Man: Pĕĕĕĕĕnnnnn.
Me: Yes. What word?
LM: Pin.
Me: Good!
Eldest Daughter: But, he said "pin" not "pen."
Me: We're Southerners. That's the way we say it.


Some of y'all might remember this passage from The Fathers by Alan Tate, but I want to highlight one sentence in particular: "In pronunciation the criterion was the oral tradition, not the way the word looked in print to an uneducated school-teacher."

:-D