Sunday, October 8, 2017

Different Spellings of English Phonemes

The English language has an irregular spelling system. The result is that many English phonemes can be spelt in various ways. Here are examples:

[f] forest off phone
[i] defeat feet grieve happy receive 
[k] car neck school skate
[m] hymn lamb morning
[n] knee now sign
[s] cycle pass seat
[o] so row though toe 
[u] boot do glue manoeuvre rude shoe you 
[v] of vine
[z] his possession zoo

Vowel sounds in particular often have many different spellings. This is especially true of the schwa, the reduced vowel present in words such as actor, singer and sugar. The list illustrates that many English phonemes have a variety of spellings.


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