Word Analysis: Reservoir

    After analyzing the structure of words from Greek and Latin, I decided to focus on a French word. Using Moat’s book as a framework and her description that the “structure of the English writing system includes word treatment, phoneme-grapheme correspondences, spelling, pattens and conventions of letter sequence, and morphology” (Moats, 2020; pg. 94), I used these points to analyze the word reservoir found on page 1059 in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 11th edition.  

Phonetic transcription: 

re-zə-ˌvwär

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1st sound 

2ndsound 

3rdsound 

4th sound

 

5th sound 

6th sound 

Phoneme

 

/ĕ/

/z/

/ə/

Silent

 

/wor/     

Grapheme

r

e

s

 

e

r

v

oir 


In analyzing the word there are a few points to discuss: 

·      The first sound we hear is /r/. 

·      The second sound we hear is the short /ĕ/. 

·      The third sound we hear is /z/ and the second most common way to spell that sound is with the letter s. 
o   One way to remember why the letter s is pronounced as a /z/ is because it follows a vowel, the letter 's', or a voiced consonant.  
 
·      The fourth sound we hear is the schwa /ə/ and the third most common way to spell that is with the letter e. 
o   According to Moats (2020) vowels that represent the schwa sound occur in unaccented syllables. Further, “vowel reduction (to schwa) presents a problem for children learning to spell because schwa can be spelled with any of the vowel letters in standard orthography, so students must learn to spelling of vowels on the basis of other, related words or by memorization” (pg. 45). In fact, there are 28 ways to spell the /ə/ sound.  
 
·      The letter r is silent, which does not identify with a sound.
o   Note: If we pronounced the word the second way the letters er would come together for one sound (i.e., vowel-r or r-controlled).  
 
·      The fifth sound we hear is /v/
o   According to Moats (2020) “…all the v words are predictable, not according to sound-symbol correspondence necessarily, but according to orthographic convention” (pg. 116).  
 
·      The sixth and final sound we hear is /wor/ and the fifth most common way to spell that sound is the letters oir. 
o   There are a couple of points to address for this phoneme: 
§  Moats (2020) asserts that “the letter W can be part of a vowel team spelling” (pg. 109) and for this, the letter is part of the vowel-r or r-controlled vowels. Therefore, the English letter [w] cannot be voiced as a single phoneme because it is a labio-velar approximant phonetic sound (i.e., a type of consonantal sound) that involves two places of constriction - a rounding of the lips and raising of the back of the tongue. Further, an approximant “are sounds that are made in such a way that one articulator is close to another without narrowing the vocal tract to create the friction necessary to be a fricative” (Yavas, 1998, pg 19).

After analyzing the word, we can determine that there are six distinctive phonemes, nine graphemes, and the accented syllable is in ·re·​ In the word itself, we notice the prefix -re- which has entries on page 1034 in the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 11th ed. The meaning is back, again, and anew. The root is ‘ser’ which means to protect. Providing access to this type of linguistic knowledge aids students with the fundamental knowledge of decoding and encoding words and building from morphological units. 

Then students can see and hear other words with similar sounds and spelling patterns in the beginning (i.e., redolent), middle (i.e., conserve) and end (i.e., conservatoire). Furthermore, it is essential to point out there are up to four ways to pronounce the word, which are based on dialect and regional pronunciations.  

Therefore, when we critically reflect on the word’s definition and consider all the elements learned, we can put the word into perspective. As practitioners in the classroom, we need to make the best choices that align with the Science of Reading which provides our students the best access to linguistic knowledge. 

In closure, spelling bee champions may ask, “What is this word’s language or origin?” because the answer will provide valuable clues for spelling accuracy” (Moats, 2020; pg. 106). 

Until next time, 

Shawn Anthony Robinson PhD 

Moats, L. C. (2020). Speech to Print. Language Essentials for Teachers . Paul H.

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