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What are the Vowel Sounds?From the 26 letters in the English alphabet, 5 of these letters are used to make 19 vowel sounds. The other 21 letters are used to make the 25 consonant sounds. The 19 vowel phonemes consist of:
5 Long Vowels 5 Short Vowels 3 Dipthongs A long and short oo (2 sounds) 4 'r' controlled vowel sounds
5 Long Vowel SoundsHere are some examples:
long /a/ as in gate long /e/ as in need long /i/ as in nice long /o/ as in yoke long /u/ as in you
You can also listen to them here. Double click the ARROW to activate the video:
5 Short Vowel SoundsHere are some examples:short /a/ as in bat short /e/ as in bet short /i/ as in bit short /o/ as in bot short /u/ as in but
Listen to the short vowel sounds on this video. Double click the ARROW to activate:
4 'r 'controlled sounds'R' controlled sounds, have a vowel and the /r/ sound:or - as in more ar - as in car er - as in her air as in fair
3 DipthongsA dipthong is a combination of two sounds, each with two different spellings. Here are three examples:
/au/ as in Paul and aw as in crawl
/ou/ as in mouse and ow as in cow
/oi/ as in noise and oy as in boy
A Long and Short /oo/ soundLong /oo/ as in moonShort /oo/ as in book
So there you have it. The 19 vowel sounds. Of course there are many ways to spell these sounds which we refer to as
phonograms.
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