The Enid Blyton Society

yes, we were taught to sound out words too, and also to sound letters out rather than 'ay, be, cee' it was 'du' for 'd' and 'gu' for 'g' and 'hu' for 'h' etc - which really helps with reading, in my opinion.

In Five Go to Billycock Hill, I learned the names of stalagmites and stalactites.Stalagmites MIGHT grow up to reach a stalactite, which was holding TIGHT to the ceiling of a cave.

very true! I always think of this even now when I'm working out which is which - though I slipped up in my Famous Five adventure and got them wrong one time!

I never looked up words but I learned a lot of new ones, simply from context.The books have a surprisingly wide vocabulary for children's books - something which I have always appreciated a great deal and have learned a lot from.

Rob Houghton wrote:yes, we were taught to sound out words too, and also to sound letters out rather than 'ay, be, cee' it was 'du' for 'd' and 'gu' for 'g' and 'hu' for 'h' etc - which really helps with reading, in my opinion.

     Most of the traditional letter names contain the sound of the letter (or one version of it, at least, where a letter has two or more different ways of pronunciation) - except "h" and "w". But where does the "u" in "du", "gu", and so on come from? I don't really see the advantage of this alternative system; and it has the disadvantage of being unfamiliar to most people, and so yet another thing for students to learn.
     I recall when reading Pitman's Shorthand textbooks (which I was considering teaching myself at one point) that every phoneme (not letter) was given a name to refer to, and these rarely coincided with the traditional letter names, but appeared to be part of a totally logical system, built from scratch, for naming each sound.
     I tend to stick to tradition in many ways, and would probably not support changing to such a system, even though it has a certain logic to it that is appealing. (Just as I think a 12-based number system would in many ways make better sense than our 10-based one, or the computer-based binary or hexadecimal (16-based) number system which has occasionally been proposed for human use. But tradition wins out here, and I would deeply resent being asked to learn and use a 12-based system.)

Regards, Michael.

It just makes spelling and reading more simple, in my view. Its hard to explain in writing because I'm talking about letter sounds only. 'Cee ay, tee' doesn't sound like 'cat' when we say it...whereas 'cu, ah, tu' sounds like 'cat'. Its all about sounding out words.

Reading one of the Adventure series (I think, Ship?) at age 6/7 might have been the first time I'd heard of a labyrinth.

That was the first time I'd heard the word "labyrinth" too. And the word "catacomb", both in Ship. Reading Valley was my first introduction to stalactites and stalagmites.

I'm pretty sure "catacombs" came into one of the Famous Five books (or else some other EB) I read when I was little, as I dimly remember one character, probably Anne, asking what they were as visions of "cats and combs" came into her head!

Yes...I think Billycock Hill mentions catacombs...but I might be wrong.

the Island of Adventure introduced me to Great Auks as well.

Hmmm, I've never read Billycock Hill, so it couldn't have been that one. I definitely remember the "cats and combs" line from somewhere, though, and I'm sure it was Enid Blyton...

I admit I get the books mixed up a bit - at least, with details like that. perhaps it was 'Five Go Off In A Caravan' - which had a lot of tunnels in it...

Could be, although I don't remember there being tunnels in Caravan. I never got very far into the story, as there was a page missing from the copy we had when I was little and I couldn't get hold of another copy at the time, so gave up!!

lol! There are loads of tunnels in Caravan...but if you didn't read that far then they can't be the 'catacombs'. I also remember the 'cat and combs' thing but can't recall which book it was in.

Ah...I've a feeling it might be Smugglers Top.