Not as easy as A, B, C

A new breed of educator wants to take the ellamenno out of the "ABC'' song so that schoolchildren won't be confused.

By JOHN REINAN
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 11, 2002

Quick question: What's the 12th letter of the alphabet?

The answer, as generations of 6-year-olds have known, is ellamenno, as in the "ABC" song:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G,

H-I-J-K-Ellamenno-P

Ellamenno: a letter that is found in no dictionary, appears in no Scrabble game, yet is recited by millions.

But perhaps no longer. Worried that children might stumble over this alphabetical oddity, a new breed of educator wants to take the ellamenno out of elementary school.

They're urging language and music teachers to slow down the old song and stop smushing letters together to fit the melody.

"Kids need good models of language use from adults," said Susan E. Canizares, editor-in-chief of the Early Childhood/Early Literacy Division of Scholastic Inc., the children's book publisher.

"The fact (is) that there are different letters in that string," she said. "So savvy teachers are now very adamant about not squishing together ellamenno-p."

In St. Petersburg, music educator Maryann "Mar" Harman is leading the anti-ellamenno brigade through her "Music With Mar" classes, attended each year by hundreds of area preschoolers.

Harman ran up against ellamenno at an early age, and it left a mark.

"I can remember being with my sister, having a pencil and pad, saying, "But show me how to write ellamenno,"' Harman recalled. "And she said, "That's not one letter -- that's four letters.'

"I said, "Then why do we say ellamenno?' And she said, "That's the melody of the song.'

"And I thought, "Well, that's stupid."'

In Harman's classes, children and parents learn a slightly different version of the "ABC" song that stresses each letter clearly.

"Children before the age of 6 take everything at face value," Harman said. "Whatever we say to them, they spit back."

But isn't this a bit of overkill? After all, most of us figured it out at some point along the way. It seems unlikely that anyone ever bombed on the SATs because she was trying to find ellamenno on the answer sheet.

Hillsborough County school officials say the issue isn't even on their radar screen. But Marianne Easton, supervisor of early childhood education for the Pinellas County schools, acknowledged the possibility of confusion.

"But children are taught the alphabet in many different ways, not just with the song," she said. "There are many opportunities to clarify that it's not just one word. They may start out thinking that, but they should have it figured out by the time they leave kindergarten."

That's true, said Josue Cruz, a professor of childhood language arts at the University of South Florida. But in teaching children, he said, it's rarely a bad idea to do things correctly.

"Early literacy is more than just reading," Cruz said. "Singing and listening to sounds is part of literacy, too.

"We're beginning to learn a lot more about early literacy," he said. "We really have not paid a heck of a lot of attention to early literacy in a very systematic manner."

So teachers who dispense with ellamenno, Cruz said, "are doing the right thing by being extra-careful in that fashion. They are making sure there will be no confusion."

As Canizares said: "You can never pinpoint a difficulty in learning to read to one thing, like mislearning the alphabet song.

"But the preschool teacher who takes the time to sing the alphabet song the right way is probably going to do other things carefully, as well.

"It can't hurt, and it might help."

Not everyone has caught the new wave, however. Many schools still sing "ABC" the old-fashioned way.

So does Barney, the purple dinosaur, thereby giving right-thinking parents another super-dee-duper reason to find him annoying.

A definite anti-ellamenno trend seems to be developing, however. And having shot down one linguistic lapse, Harman already has the next target in her sights.

"We also end our song with "x, y, z,' not "x, y and z,' " she said.

"Because if you ask a child what the last letter of the alphabet is, he'll say, "anzee."'

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