I wanted to explain to a new student of mine what a sentence is but then I observed I had to start from the basics. It didn't matter that he is a senior secondary school student. I started off from the English Alphabet. Sit back and carefully read through how I defined a sentence to him, beginning from the letter to the word to the phrase to the clause to the sentence. I am sure you will find it interesting.
When a child begins to be taught how to read, or write in English or any other language, the first lesson he or she is taught is how to recognize the letters, in this instance, the letters in the English Alphabet. Let me quickly say that there is only one alphabet in English, which consists of 26 letters. So, if you are asked the question: How many alphabets do we have in English? What would you say? One, isn't it? Good!
Each of the letters have the upper and lower case forms. What that means is that each of the letters can be written in capital or small letters. For example,
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff
The letters are of two different types: the vowel letters and the consonant letters. The vowel letters are five (5) in number: a, e, i, o, u. This then means that the other twenty-one (21) letters are consonant letters. So, there are five (5) vowel letters and twenty-one (21) consonant letters.
It is these letters that are combined together to form what is called the word. For example, letter o and letter n can be combined together to form the word on. Similarly, letter n and letter o can be combined together to form the word no. In other words, with letter n and letter o, two (different) words can be formed depending on how they are combined—on (letter o before letter n) and no (letter n before letter o). It's the same the combination of letters a, m, y, which can result into the word yam, may, or even Amy (a female name). That said about the letters, we now move on to the word. We have said it is the combination of letters that make a word. Good.
The blogger, Olabanji O. Odurombi, can be contacted via SMS, Voice Call, WhatsApp on 08037699294.
The blogger has also authored the following books:
English Simplified!
A Text of English Sounds
Eku: A Corpus of Yoruba Greetings with Tales and Essays
Identifying Grammatical Names and Functions—e-book (Due for release soon)
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