This way to English

In the last six posts in this section, we have been defining vowel sounds in English. Here are all of the vowel sounds together in a table. If you want a concise explanation of the table, click on it and you'll find one. You should spend plenty of time trying to pronounce these sounds accurately before you continue reading this post.

If you're thinking, "That's not phonetics!", that's because it's not phonetics!

Vowel sounds and written words

Now let's think about how the vowel sounds are related to how we write words. I'm going to make a distinction between two types of words: 'standard spelling' and 'non-standard spelling'.

'Standard spelling' is predictable, and in some cases, you will be able to pronounce a written word just by looking at it.

For example, the word 'coat' is pronounced coet, not coe | at.

The letter combination 'oa' is pronounced oe in English. This might not be the same as your language but it is still predictable. It is not an exception; it is standard spelling.

There are other situations where you see a word and you don't know for certain how it is pronounced. The pronunciation here may still be predictable: perhaps we have two possibilities instead of one.

For example, the word 'brow' could logically be pronounced broe or brŏ. In fact it is brŏ. There is no way of knowing for certain until you hear the word being used, but there were only two possibilities to begin with. You have a 50/50 chance of guessing the right one. This is still classified as 'standard spelling.'

'Non-standard Spelling' is not easily predictable, and it is hard to find rules to predict it. However, we can start to predict how to say words by comparing them to other words that have a similar spelling. We will deal with non-standard spelling in later posts.

Standard spelling

As the vowel sound table (above) suggests, each sound is associated with a particular letter. I will call this the 'root letter'.

The short sounds are written using the root letter on its own, surrounded by consonants. When two vowels are next to each other, we usually get a long sound. Also, if vowels are separated by only one consonant, we usually get a long sound.

Let's look at the spellings with root letter A.

For example, in the word 'cat', there is one vowel, on its own, so the sound is a.

In the word 'nail', there are two vowels next to each other. In the word 'cake', there are two vowels separated by only one consonant. In both cases, the first of the two vowels is 'a', and we get the long sound, ae.

You can see that the vowel sound in 'nail' and 'cake' is the same but it is written in different ways.
The combination 'ai' spells the sound ae, and the combination 'ae' (here separated with a 'k') also spells the sound ae.

Another spelling of the ae sound is 'ay', which usually occurs at the end of a word.
For example, 'pay'.

So how do we know which sounds the combinations make in standard spellings? Well, you have to learn them. Five spelling tables, including the one below, will be listed in the next post.

Most of the spellings, in the first column, start with the root letter, 'a'.
Now, you will note there is one spelling of ae that doesn't use the root letter, and that is 'ei'. This is a surprise but it is not an exception; it is still a predictable way to make the ae sound.

Unfortunately, the same combination, 'ei' sometimes makes an ee in other words, such as 'receive', and sometimes an iy, as in 'poltergeist'. Because it is problematic in this way, it is highlighted in green.



From the table for Root letter A you can see that:

• there is one standard way to spell a: 'a'
• there are four standard ways to spell ae: 'ae', 'ai', 'ay' and 'ei'.
• there is only one standard way to spell ār: 'ar'.
• there are two standard ways to spell e~: 'air' and 'are'

Note that the sound e~ is included under Root letter A because it is usually associated with the letter, 'a'.

Also, I can hear you complaining that the word 'are' is not actually pronounced e~, and is in fact pronounced ār. You are right, of course. But, my friends, the word 'are' is non-standard spelling! The words 'care', 'dare', 'fare', 'hare', 'mare', 'rare', 'ware', 'share', 'spare' and 'stare' are all pronounced e~, like the good, honest, standard words that they are!