LESSON 1 – CONSONANT SOUNDS – THE VOWELS /æ/, /Λ/

Consonant letters and their

sounds
A consonant letter usually represents one consonant sound. Some
consonant letters, for example, c, g, s, can represent two different
consonant sounds.

Letters Sounds Examples

b [b] baby, best, buy

[s] center, cellar, cigarette;

c
[k] cake, come, cucumber.

d [d] day, dear, die

f [f] fast, female, five

[g] game, gap, get;

g [j] general, gin, giant;
[zh] mirage, garage, beige

[h] hair, help, home;

h
[-] hour, honor, honest.

j [j] jam, Jane, jet.

k [k] Kate, kind, kill

l [l] late, let, live.

m [m] make, men, mind

n [n] napkin, never, night.

p [p] paper, person, pick.

 [kw] quality, question, require;
q (qu)
[k] unique, technique, antique.

r [r] rain, red, rise, brief.

[s] send, simple, release;

s
[z] cause, present, reason

t [t] task, tell, time.

v [v] vast, vein, vivid

w [w] wall, war, way

[ks] exercise, exchange, relax;

x [gz] exam, exact, exult;
[z] Xenon, Xerox, xenophobia.

[z] zero, zoo, jazz;

z
[ts] pizza, Mozart, Nazi.

Note 1: The letter Y

The letter Y can function as a vowel or as a consonant. As a
vowel, Y has the vowel sounds [i], [ai]. As a consonant, Y has the
consonant sound [y] (i.e., a semivowel sound), usually at the beginning
of the word and only in the syllable before a vowel.
[i]: baby, hurry, lyrics, mystery;
[ai]: by, try, rely, nylon, type;
[y]: yacht, yard, year, yes, yet, yield, you, young, Yukon.

Note 2: The letter W

The letter W represents the vowel sound [u:] in the diphthongs [au] and
[ou]: now, how, owl, brown; low, own, bowl.
 The vowels /æ/, /Λ/

Sound: /æ/
Tip: To produce this sound, open your mouth wide, lower your jaw, and put the back
of your tongue down.

/æ/
 The old lady sat down.
 The little boy was sad.
  Andy was very mad.

Sound: /Λ/
/ʌ/ is a short vowel sound pronounced with the jaw mid to open, the tongue central
or slightly back, and the lips relaxed:

As you can see from the examples, /ʌ/ is normally spelt with ‘u’, ‘o’ or a
combination of these. The symbol /ʌ/ does not appear in the Roman alphabet,
so in phonics UH is generally used to represent the sound.

Homophones with /ʌ/

Owing to the different spellings that produce /ʌ/, some words sound identical but
are written differently (homophones):
Minimal Pair /æ/ and /ʌ/
as in bat and but
Below is a list of words that vary only by one having the sound /æ/ and the other
the sound /ʌ/.

/æ/ and /ʌ/ are the two closest vowel sounds in English and so it is very difficult
to hear and pronounce the difference. In fact, in some American accents there is
no distinction between the two. It is still worth language learners working on the
difference between them, however, as there are many words that vary only by
this sound.

/æ/ /ʌ/
Bat But
Batter Butter
Cap Cup
Match Much
Drank Drunk
Fan Fun
hat Hut
Ran Run

Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCWNFNy7qZE