Comment by smeej

My kindergarten class had a practice that, now that you say that, might have been meant to help those letter-sound associations.

Besides routinely reciting the alphabet forward and backward (I didn't know being able to recite the alphabet backward was unusual until I was in high school!), we would also do a phonetic version that sounded something like, "A, ah. B, buh. C, kuh. D, duh. E, eh," making a sound for every letter.

I don't know if it helped the kids who didn't already know how to read, but those were some of the peak years for phonics instruction in primary schools, so I guess at least someone thought it was working!

Sesame Street also had this song where they would pronounce the whole alphabet as though it were one really long word, like, "Ab-keh-def-ghee-jeckel-menop-qwur-stu-vwix-is." That one always made me laugh, but I got good practice out of it!

I was mildly afraid that you were going to describe something that would make me go, "Wait--am I dyslexic?" but no, I don't experience spelling that way. Most words exist in my head in both written and spoken form inseparably. It's very rare that I mix up homophones when I'm writing, for example, because I'm not trying to put the sound of a word into letters or match letters to the sound if the word. The letters and the sounds are inextricably linked in each specific meaning unit.