Vowel Digraphs All Options Flashcards
ai
Long A: aid, grain, drain, train, faint, main, plait, plaid
Short E: said, again, against
Short I: fountain, chaplain, chamberlain, curtain (shwa), certain (shwa)
Long I: bonsai
ay
Long A: say, sway, lay, tray, day
ee
Long E: meet (encounter), feet (body part), creep , bee, tree, sheet, free, green, teen, sneeze, cheek, queen, weep, cheese, wheeze, breeze, weed, week (duration), seem (appear), keep, sheen, beet (root)
ea
Long E: each, please, teach, eat, meat (animal), feat (achievement), beat (strike), seam (sewing), weak (little energy)
Short E: bread, head, tread, homestead
Long A: steak, great, break, bear, tear, wear
ie
Long I: pie, tie, lie (horizontal), die (board game), cries, flies, fried (end of a base word, changed from y to add suffix)
Long E: wield, shield, yield, field, relief, chief, brief, grief, thief, cookie, smoothie, goalie, brownie, foodie, brownie, believe, achieve (-ld, -f, -ve, two syllable -ie )
ei
Long E: conceive, receive, seizure, protein, caffeine, lutein, weird, ceiling, leisure, seize, receipt
Long A: neighbour, beige, vein, surveillance, their, dreidel, heir, veil, heinous, reign, skein
Long I: heist, height, feisty, apartheid, seismic, meiosis, Stein, Fahrenheit, poltergeist, kalaidoscope
There are only a limited number of words that use the EI phonogram, and many of these words are more advanced vocabulary.
oo
long OO (last sound of long U): food, tool, cool, loop, zoo, moon
Short OO: book, took, look, cook, foot, hoodie
Short U: flood, blood, bloody
OR sound before R (close to long O then R sound): door, poor, floor
Long O: brooch
ou
OW (Long A then long O): ouch, mouse, house, mountain, mouth, noun, out
Short O: bought, fought, sought, cough
Short U: touch, rough, tough, enough
short OO: could, would, should
Long OO: route, through
Long U: You
ow
OW (long A then long O): cow, now, vow
Long O: sow, throw, tow
oe
Long O: aloe, oboe
Long OO: canoe, shoe
ue
Long OO: blue, true, clue,
Long U: venue, rescue, argue
There is no specific pattern so you can try both when decoding a new word.
ey
Long E: key, donkey, valley, chimney, money, honey, Parsley, monkey, turkey, kidney
Long A: hey, they, obey
ay
Long A: say, day, may, stay, play, hay, pray, stray, display
oy
OI (close to long O then long E): toy, boy, joy
oi
OI (close to long O then long E): oil, soil, toil, avoid, voice, noise
au
Short O (but relaxed, sometimes shown as AW): autumn, sauce, launch
aw
Short O (but relaxed, sometimes shown as AW): Awful, saw, law
OI: lawyer (the y makes it change the sound from short o to oi)
Summary of all vowel sounds from a Canadian perspective.
Long A, E, I, O, U
Short A, E, I, O, U
Long OO, Short OO, OI, AW, OW
Long E then slight R: beer, pier, hear
Short E then slight R: bear, pair, hair
OO then slight R: tour
Short O then slight R: are, far
Long O then slight R: or, more
There are many R controlled vowels, so some may not be listed here
M and N create more nasalized vowels in Canada. In Britain they do not. In the States, everything is more nasalized so the M and N don’t really change the vowel specifically. Use words like an and am to see how they are pronounced in comparison to cat. In Canada these differ.
AL makes the A sound like Short O as in fall
Shwa sound in Canada is basically just short U but more relaxed. Since short U in Canada is already relaxed we don’t hear much difference. In Britain there is more distinction between the shwa and short U. For that reason, I don’t see it as a new vowel sound.
Britain has 20 vowels in total:
7 short vowels: /ɪ/ /ʊ/ /ə/ /e/ /ɒ/ /ʌ/ /æ/
5 long vowels: /iː/ /uː/ /ɑː/ /ɔː/ /ɜː/
8 diphthongs: /eɪ/ /aɪ//ɔɪ/ /əʊ/ /aʊ/ /ɪə/ /eə/ /ʊə/
Long A:
/eɪ/ as in day, pay, say, lay
Long I:
/aɪ/ as in sky, buy, cry, tie
OI (long O then long E):
/ɔɪ/ as in boy, toy, coy or the first syllable of soya
Long E then R:
/ɪə/ as in beer, pier, hear
Short E then R:
/eə/ as in bear, pair, and hair
OO then R:
/ʊə/ as in tour, poor or the first syllable of tourist
Long O:
/əʊ/ as in oh, no, so, or phone
OW:
/aʊ/ as in all the words of “How now brown cow!”
Long /oo/
Food, tool
Short /oo/
book, took
/oi/
boy, oil, avoid, voice
/aw/
Autumn, sauce, awful, saw
/ow/
cow, now,
