Let's get to know the Vowels.
Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu
The rest of the letters in the alphabet are called Consonants. The vowels may have "long" or "short" sounds. Now, this is a tutorial so I'm going to make it easy as I can, without using those complicated symbols. The long sounds of the vowels are pronounced same as its name.
| Aa | long a | /ey/ | gate, bake, whale, tape |
| short a | /a/ | bat, map, sack, ran |
| Ee | long e | /i/ | meet, heat, receive |
| short e | /e/ | wet, yes, test |
| Ii | long i | /ai/ | kite, like, microphone |
| short i | / I / | sit, till, Tim |
| Oo | long o | /o/ | hole, bowl, core |
| short o | /ah/ | rock, log, mop |
| Uu | long u | /u/ | muse, united, tune |
| short u | /uh/ | sun, bus, must |
You may have noticed that most of the vowels with long sounds are spelled with another vowel following it. For example:
Ee: "meet", "heat", "receive". You can see "ee", "ea", and "ei".
Oo: "tour", "door", "loaf". This time, the combinations are "ou", "oo", "oa".
For short vowel sounds, one important thing to remember about them is that it is usually followed by a single consonant letter or 2 consonants. For example:
car --> r is a single consonant so "a" has a short sound.
mist --> st are 2 consonants so "i" has a short sound.
mice --> ce are 1 consonant and 1 vowel so it is pronounced as m-ai-s with a long i sound.
Try to determine whether the following words have long or short vowel sounds. Careful, they can be tricky. While you're already studying the words below, open the dictionary and know the meaning of each word.
1. tie
2. wise
3. mother
4. wander
5. melt
6. hour
7. love
8. stair
9. while
10. water
