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© Samuel Haldane 2005-2006
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Pronunciation and Spelling

This website uses symbols to transcribe phonemes (sounds). For an explanation of what these symbols represent, click here: vowels, consonants. The following special symbols are used:
ə Λ ā ē ī ō ū ű œ θ δ š ž č ĵ ŋ
If your browser cannot display any of these characters, you are advised to move to a browser which can, such as Internet Explorer 6.0.
Note: an apostrophe ' is placed before the accented vowel.

Introduction to the problems and principles of English spelling and pronunciation.
Transcription of sounds: To make it clear what sound is intended, symbols are used to represent individual phonemes (sounds).
Introduction.
Vowels: Simple vowel list. Detailed vowel list.
Consonants: Simple consonant list. Detailed consonant list.
Extremely useful page!
List of Vowel Pronunciations: a list of vowel spellings, explaining how they are pronounced in different words. Full listings of words spelt with augh, ear, ough, and many other spellings.
Principles of pronunciation: There are no really strict rules to how to pronounce English words, but there are some tendencies or guidelines which are useful to learn:

List of derivatives: Related words such as bath and bathe or produce and product spell different sounds with the same letters (underlined). This page lists many of these differences, with links to pages explaining the principles behind those changes.

Extremely useful page!
Spelling rules for suffixation: how spellings change when suffixes like -ed, -es/-s, -ing, -ly, -er/-or/-ar are attached to words.

The vowel-letters:
Pronouncing Single Vowel-Letters: guidelines for pronouncing a, e, i, o, u, y.
History of the Vowels: why English vowel-letters are pronounced so differently from those in other European languages.

The consonant-letters:
Silent Consonant-Letters: The letters b in lamb, k in know and l in half are all silent. Fortunately, there are some rules for this.
Reasons for sound changes: Understanding these processes will make it easier to understand why some English words have the pronunciation which they have.
Rhoticity. Palatalisation. Vowel reduction. Fronting and unrounding. Shifts in the accent.

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