A Problem With Jolly Phonics

Jolly Phonics is one of the most popular programmes in Irish primary schools for basic phonological awareness. If you’re a parent you’ve probably heard your child coming home singing about ants on his arm. However, you also might notice that if your child is aping the song completely that you might hear the words with a bit of a British twang –  Aw-nts, Aw-nts, Aw-nts on my Aw-m which are causing Al-awm.

While Irish teachers can get over these types of hurdles very easily, of the 42 phonemes that children learn, the sounds that Jolly Phonics teach use English pronunciation of words, which might cause some confusion to a young child, if not alarm!

The phonemes that might affect you are:

• a –> see above
• er –> in Jolly Phonics, this is pronounced sort of like a short “a” so the ending of doctor sounds like the ending of bizarre roughly speaking. In Ireland, the “r” is sounded and “er” sounds a little like “urr”
• ir – in Jolly Phonics the “r” is unvoiced and sounds like a “uh” sound. In Ireland we pronouce “ir” the same as we do “er”
• ar – sounds like “aw” in Jolly Phonics. Sounds like the word “are” in Ireland.

To help, many of our sellers have created some good resources for Joly Phonics. Check them out below.