Sounds, letters and spelling
Alphabet, vowel sounds, silent letters and letter-sound mismatch.
English uses an alphabet of 26 letters. Five of them — a, e, i, o, u — are vowels, and the remaining 21 are consonants (the letter y can act as either). A key idea in English phonetics is that letters and sounds are not the same: the number of letters in a word is often different from the number of sounds we actually pronounce. Vowel letters can stand for short sounds (the /ɪ/ in 'ship') or long sounds (the /iː/ in 'sheep'), and two vowel sounds can glide together into one diphthong, as in 'rain', 'boy' or 'house'. English also has many silent letters that are written but not pronounced, such as the k in 'knife', the w in 'write', the b in 'lamb' and the gh in 'night'. Because spelling and pronunciation often disagree, the same letter can be silent in one word and sounded in another. For example: the word 'knight' is spelled with 6 letters (k-n-i-g-h-t) but pronounced with only 3 sounds /naɪt/, because the k and gh are silent and 'igh' represents a single diphthong.
Rules
- 1The English alphabet has 26 letters: 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and 21 consonants.
- 2Count letters by writing; count sounds by pronouncing — they are often different.
- 3Short vowel sounds (ship /ɪ/) differ from long vowel sounds (sheep /iː/); a diphthong is two vowel sounds glided as one (rain, boy, house).
- 4Silent letters are written but not spoken: k in knife, w in write, b in lamb, gh in night.
- 5Spelling rarely matches pronunciation exactly, so always check the actual sounds you say.
Practice
10 easy · 10 medium · 10 hard