FORTY-FOUR

SOUNDS IN
ENGLISH
44 Sounds in English
The following lists provide sample
words to use when teaching the sounds
of the English language. You may choose
to find more words to fill out word
families or align with sight vocabulary
lists such as a Dolch Word List. Your
learners will benefit most from terms
that are familiar to them or make sense
in their life.
The 5 Short Vowel Sounds
The five short vowel sounds in English are a,
e, i, o, and u.
 short a: and, as, and after
 short e: pen, hen, and lend
 short i: it and in
 short o: top and hop
 short u: under and cup
 Remember that these sounds are not
necessarily indicative of spelling. Note
that the above words all contain the
vowel whose sound they make but this is
not always the case. A word might sound
as if it contains a certain vowel that is
not there. Examples of words whose
short vowel sounds do not correspond
with their spelling are busy and do.
The 6 Long Vowel Sounds
The six long vowel sounds in English are a, e, i, o, u, and oo.
 long a: make and take
 long e: beet and feet
 long i: tie and lie
 long o: coat and toe
 long u (pronounced "yoo"): music and cute
 long oo: goo and droop
Examples of words whose long vowel sounds do not correspond
with their spelling are they, try, fruit, and few.
The R-Controlled Vowel Sounds
An r-controlled vowel is a vowel whose
sound is influenced by the r that comes
before it. The three r-controlled vowel
sounds are ar, er, and or.
 ar: bark and dark
 er: her, bird, and fur
 or: fork, pork, and stork
 Students must pay close attention to
the er sound in words because it can be
created by an r-controlled e, i, or u. These
vowels are all transformed into the same
sound when an r is attached to the end of
them. More examples of this include better,
first, and turn.
The 18 Consonant Sounds
The letters c, q, and x are not denoted by unique
phonemes because they are found in other sounds.
The c sound is covered by k sounds in words
like crust, crunch, and create and by s sounds in
words like cereal, city, and cent (the c is found in
the spelling of these words only but does not have
its phoneme). The q sound is found in kw words like
backward and Kwanza. The x sound is found
in ks words like kicks.
 b: bed and bad  n: not and nice
 k: cat and kick  p: pan and play
 d: dog and dip  r: ran and rake
 f: fat and fig  s: sit and smile
 g: got and girl  t: to and take
 h: has and him  v: van and vine
 j: job and joke  w: water and went
 l: lid and love  y: yellow and yawn
 m: mop and math  z: zipper and zap
The Blends
Blends are formed when two or three
letters combine to create a distinct
consonant-sound, often at the beginning of a
word. In a blend, the sounds from each
original letter are still heard, they are just
blended quickly and smoothly together. The
following are common examples of blends.
 bl: blue and blow  pr: prize and prank
 cl: clap and close  tr: tree and try
 fl: fly and flip  sk: skate and sky
 gl: glue and glove  sl: slip and slap
 pl: play and please  sp: spot and speed
 br: brown and break  st: street and stop
 cr: cry and crust  sw: sweet and sweater
 dr: dry and drag  spr: spray and spring
 fr: fry and freeze  str: stripe and strap
 gr: great and ground
The 7 Digraph Sounds

A digraph is formed when two consonants

come together to create an entirely new
sound that is distinctly different from the
sounds of the letters independently. These
can be found anywhere in a word but most
often the beginning or end. Some examples
of common digraphs are listed below.
 ch: chin and ouch
 sh: ship and push
 th: thing
 th: this
 wh: when
 ng: ring
 nk: rink
 Point out to your students that there are
two sounds that th can make and be sure to
provide plenty of examples.
Diphthongs and Other Special
Sounds
A diphthong is essentially a digraph with vowels—
it is formed when two vowels come together to
create a new sound in a single syllable as the sound
of the first vowel glides into the second. These are
usually found in the middle of a word. See the list
below for examples.
 oi: oil and toy
 ow: owl and ouch
 ey: rain
 A diphthong is essentially a digraph with
vowels—it is formed when two vowels come
together to create a new sound in a single
syllable as the sound of the first vowel glides
into the second. These are usually found in
the middle of a word. See the list below for
examples.
 oi: oil and toy
 ow: owl and ouch
 ey: rain
 The International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA) is an alphabet of phonetic notation
designed to capture all the different
ways words in English can be
pronounced, based on the Latin
alphabet. It was designed by the
International Phonetic Association (1999)
as a standardized system for
representing sounds of oral language.
 The IPA is particularly useful when it comes
to describing individual sounds of spoken
English. This is because in English there can
be more way of pronouncing the same
graphemes. For example, in English, there
are two main ways of producing the <a>
sound: bath or grass with a long or short
. People from the south of England tend to
pronounce the long and people from the
North the short.
 The standard form of spoken English or the
reference accent for English is known as Received
Pronunciation (RP), and it is this accent of English
upon which IPA is based. RP is also called variously:
BBC English, the Queen’s English or ‘Correct English’
and is the spoken form to which many learners of
English as an additional language aspire. However,
the idea of RP is wide ranging and encompassing,
and the IPA tries to capture how people actually
speak. The English language, as a living language, is
also subject to change, including the ways in which
words are pronounced.
 The BBC English we have today is very different
from that of fifty years ago when presenters were
required to take elocution lessons in RP. Today, the
BBC has presenters from a wide range of
backgrounds and no longer requires them to take
elocution lessons. Similarly, the speech of the
British Royal Family is different with each
generation, so that the accent of the younger
generation of the Royal Family is very different
from that of older ones. Even so, IPA acts as a
useful reference against which variation, including
variation in RP, can be identified.
 The tables below illustrates the
equivalence of each grapheme (or
letter) in the orthographic alphabet to
a phoneme in IPA. Table 1 gives
consonant grapheme-phoneme
correspondence, and Table 2, vowel
grapheme-phoneme correspondence.
Table 1
Consonants
consonant IPA representative words consonant IPA representative
grapheme grapheme words
phoneme phoneme

/b/ b baby /r/ r rabbit, wrong

/d/ d dog /s/ s sun,

mouse, city, scienc
e
/f/ f field, photo /t/ t tap
/g/ g game /v/ v van
/h/ h hat /w/ w was
/j/ ʤ judge, giant, barge /y/ j yes
/k/ k cook, quick, mix, Chris /z/ z zebra, please, is
 /l/ l lamb /th/ ð then
/m/ m monkey, comb /th/ θ thin

/n/ n nut, knife, gnat /ch/ ʧ chip, watch

/ng/ ŋ ring, sink /sh/ ʃ ship,

mission, chef

/p/ p paper zh/ ʒ treasure

Table 2
Vowels
vowel IPA representative vowel IPA representative
phoneme words phonemes words
s
/a/ æ cat /oo/ ʊ look, would, put

/e/ e peg, bread /ar/ ɑ: cart, fast (regional)

/i/ ɪ pig, give /ur/ ɜ: burn, first, term,

heard, work

/o/ ɒ log, want /au/ ɔ: torn, door, warn,

haul, law, call

/u/ ʌ plug, love /er/ ə wooden, circus,

sister
/ae/ eɪ pain, day, gate, /ow/ aʊ down, shout
station

/ee/ i: sweet, heat, thief, /oi/ ɔɪ coin, boy

these

/ie/ aɪ tried, light, my, /air/ eə stairs, bear, hare

shine, mind

/oe/ oʊ road, blow, bone, /ear/ ɪə fear, beer, here

cold
/ue/ u: moon, blue, grew, /ure/ ʊə pure, cure
tune
Standard Lexical Sets
It is useful to consider the pronunciation of vowel sounds in
English through the idea of Standard Lexical Sets, introduced by
the linguist John C. Wells in 1982. Wells defined one lexical set
based on the pronunciation of words in the reference accent
Received Pronunciation (RP) for the English spoken in England.
English has five vowels in its alphabet: a, e, i ,o u. However, there
are many more ways of pronouncing the vowels than the five
sounds given by a,e,i,o,u. /a/ can be pronounced as a ‘short’
sound as in the word <bad>, or pronunciations common in the
North of England, such as <grass> and <bath>.
 It can also represent a ‘long’ sound, as in the
word <laugh>, or <bath>, and <grass>. The sound
represented by /o/ can also be spelled in different ways,
such as in the word <off> or in <cough>.

Wells classified vowel sounds of the English language

into 24 lexical sets based on the pronunciation of the
vowel within the first stressed syllable of a word. Each
lexical set is named after a representative keyword, as
shown below.
Reference:

 https://www.grammar-
monster.com/glossary/participles.htm
 https://www.grammar-
monster.com/glossary/participle_phrases.h
tm