How do you say the 'gh' in English words? Generally speaking, the best idea is to ignore the 'gh'. Don't say anything! However, all of the words that end in 'gh' in this poem (about sharks), end in an f sound! Note also that 'gh' never sounds like th in English.
Stuff About Sharks
Sharks laugh a lot lārf
They often cough coff
They're tough enough tuff inuff
And sometimes rough ruff
While pigs scoff
Their food from a trough troff
Sharks are more likely
To rip your arms off!
---- vocabulary ----
tough = strong; resistant
rough = not gentle; not mild; not smooth
scoff = eat like a pig
trough = food container for farmyard animals
If we go back to the vowel sound table, you'll remember that each column has a letter at the top. This is the root letter and it is associated with all of the sounds in that column.
Let's look at root letter A.
The short sounds, in row 1, are written using the root letter on its own, surrounded by consonants.
For example, in the word 'cat', there is one vowel, on its own, so the sound is a.
When two vowels are next to each other, we usually get the long sound in row 2. Also, if vowels are separated by only one consonant, we also get the long sound.
For example, 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.
The vowel sound in 'nail' and 'cake' is the same but itis 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.
So how do we know which sound a particular combination makes? Well, you can learn them. This is the spelling table for Root Letter A.
You can see that another spelling of the ae sound is 'ay', as in 'pay'. Most of the spellings start with the root letter.
Now, you will notice there is one spelling of ae that doesn't use the root letter, and that is 'ei'. This is a surprise but it is still one way to spell the ae sound.
Unfortunately, the same combination, 'ei' sometimes makes an ee in other words, such as 'receive', and sometimes an iy, as it does in 'poltergeist'. Letter combinations like this that can make different sounds will be highlighted in green and I will refer to them as chameleons.
From the table for Root letter A you can see that:
there is one standard way of spelling a: 'a'.
there are four standard ways of spelling ae: 'ae', 'ai', 'ay' and 'ei'.
there is only one standard way of spelling ār: 'ar'.
there are three standard ways of spelling e~: 'air', 'are' and 'eir'.
Note that the sound e~ is included under Root letter A because it is usually associated with the letter, 'a'. Spelling e~ 'are' or 'air' is much more common than spelling it 'eir'.
Also, I can hear you complaining that the word 'are' is not actually pronounced e~, and is in fact pronouncedār. 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!
In the next pronunciation post, we'll look at the spelling tables for each of the root letters, A, E, I, O and U.
In the previous pronunciation post, we reviewed the vowel sounds. Now let's think about how they 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'.
Let's look at some examples:
Sound
Standard Spelling
Non-standard Spelling
hat
hat
hed
head
scārf
scarf
coet
coat
lārf
laugh
ruum
room
cuk
cook
blud
blood
Standard Spelling
'scarf' is standard spelling but 'laugh' is not
'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 words 'hat', 'scarf' and 'coat' are totally predictable. If you see the written words, you can pronounce them, if you know that 'a' makes an a sound, 'ar' makes an ār sound and 'oa' makes an oe sound.
Maybe 'oa' doesn't make an oe sound in your language, but it does in English. It's predictable, so it's 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, in standard spelling, the letter combination 'oo' either makes an uu sound or an u sound. So the word 'room' could logically be pronounced ruum or rum, and the word 'cook', could be cuuk or cuk.
But 'room' is ruum and 'cook' is cuk. 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.'
(Actually, depending on where they live, some people say rum for 'room' and others say cuuk for 'cook'.)
Non-standard Spelling
'cook' and 'room' are standard spelling but 'blood' is not
Non-standard Spelling' is not easily predictable, and it is hard to find any rules at all.
The words 'head', 'laugh' and 'blood' are all non-standard. The way they are written doesn't match the way we say them. Why don't we write 'hed', 'larf', and 'blud'? That would be logical, right?
Or why don't we pronounce them, heed, lōrand bluud (or blud)?
Sorry, this is the way it is with non-standard spelling. On the positive side, when you start to group words together in families, you will start to see patterns. We will deal with this in later posts.
Let's stick with the standard stuff for now... in the next post we'll talk about how to understand the relationship between standard spelling and sounds.
In the first six posts in the pronunciation section, we have been defining the vowel sounds in English. Below are all of the vowel sounds together in a table. You should spend plenty of time trying to pronounce these sounds clearly. If you don't, people will not understand you.
This system of notation is called SPELL. It helps to make a connection
between the sounds in English and the letters you need to write them.
Let me talk you through the table.
In row zero, we have the names of the letters, A, E, I, O and U. Each letter is associated with a number of sounds, which are given in the yellow part of the table.
In row 5, we have the lazy vowel, which is the unstressed vowel sound,~and the most common sound in the English language. It's lazy because it's very relaxed - you don't need to make a shape with your mouth - it's almost not there. Click here for more information.
So, those are all of the basic vowel sounds.
Row 6, in grey, is a bit different. These sounds are combinations of vowel sounds that we have already defined. But we're going to give them a name anyway: the sliders. They are made by sliding from one vowel sound to the lazy vowel ~.
They are... e~, ee~, iy~, ŏ~and uu~.
Each one is associated with a letter and is placed in that column in the table.
The e~ slider is a little unusual. It is a combination of the sounds eand ~but has jumped over into the A column. This means that it is usually associated with an A: for example, in the word, 'airfare' (e~fe~) Click here for more information. So, that's the summary of the vowel sounds. Now that we know what they are, let's find out how we can relate them to written English.
