Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Spanish Wooden Alphabet Blocks

Spanish Wooden Alphabet BlocksI just received this set brand new and was actually very disappointed to learn that it's two letters short. I grew up mostly bilingual and wanted to teach my toddler the Spanish alphabet. I chose this set specifically because I can just remove the additional letters (CH, LL, N with the Tilde, and the double R) to practice the English ABC's with her.

I am well aware that there are discrepancies regarding the actual number of letters in the Spanish alphabet, with some sources stating 27 up to the traditional alphabet counting 30. Most sources I checked, including native speakers in my family, stated that of the extra letters, the double R is the most recent casualty dropped from the official alphabet. That being said however, Uncle Goose includes all four letters in their 28 block set, which leads me to my problem...when I try to put together the entire alphabet in Spanish with this set, I end up two blocks short, always missing the W and the Y (the letters are available since each block has multiple letters on it, but you can't put one block in two places.) Granted, I have no problems putting the alphabet together in English, but if that was all I wanted to do, I would have just ordered the English set for my daughter.

It's a great concept, and I have written Uncle Goose directly to ask for the two missing letters to what should be a 30 piece set. Also, price check before ordering this, or any other Uncle Goose set, from Amazon. I found it cheaper by $1.00 on the Uncle Goose site, which goes pretty far these days.

***UPDATE: I emailed the company which manufactures the Uncle Goose blocks explaining the situation and requested the missing blocks. Their response indicated that they are aware letters are missing, even though the item description calls it a "complete set." They also told me that due to their manufacturing process, they had to make a "compromise" and purposefully left out the missing letters. I was told they could send me the two letters I needed to make a 30 piece set and asked to pay the $5 shipping fee. This is unacceptable.

FYI to bilingual parents or those working to teach their child a second language, go ahead and buy this set if you don't mind not having the whole 30 letter alphabet. But look for other options if this is your intention. It's not worth the frustration.

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