Modern english alphabet

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Introduction

English Language, chief medium of communication of people in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and numerous other countries. It is the official language of many nations in the Commonwealth of Nations and is widely understood and used in all of them. It is spoken in more parts of the world than any other language and by more people than any other tongue except Chinese.

English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian group within the western branch of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages. It is related most closely to the Frisian language, to a lesser extent to Netherlandic (Dutch-Flemish) and the Low German (Plattdeutsch) dialects, and more distantly to Modern High German. Its parent, Proto-Indo-European, was spoken around 5,000 years ago by nomads who are thought to have roamed the south-east European plains.

English is a West Germanic language related to Dutch, Frisian and German with a significant amount of vocabulary from French, Latin, Greek and many other languages.

Approximately 341 million people speak English as a native language and a further 267 million speak it as a second language in over 104 countries including the UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, American Samoa, Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Botswana, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Denmark.

An alphabet is a standard set of letters (basic written symbols or graphemes) which is used to write one or more languages based on the general principle that the letters represent phonemes (basic significant sounds) of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries (in which each character represents a syllable) and logographic (in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic unit).

The changes affect all the spheres of the language: grammar and vocabulary, phonetics and spelling. The changes that any language undergoes are gradual and very slow but pronounced enough if you compare the stages of its development within a century or even half a century. The history of the English language is generally subdivided conventionally into Old English (5th--11th century), Middle English (11th-- 15th century) and New English (15th century--till now).

1. History of the English Alphabet

Old English alphabet

The English language was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, in use from the 5th century. This alphabet was brought to what is now England, along with the proto-form of the language itself, by Anglo-Saxon settlers. Very few examples of this form of written Old English have survived, these being mostly short inscriptions or fragments.

The Latin script, introduced by Christian missionaries, began to replace the Anglo-Saxon futhorc from about the 7th century, although the two continued in parallel for some time. Futhorc influenced the emerging English alphabet by providing it with the letters thorn (? ?) and wynn (? ?). The letter eth (? ?) was later devised as a modification of dee (D d), and finally yogh (? ?) was created by Norman scribes from the insular g in Old English and Irish, and used alongside their Carolingian g.

The a-e ligature ash (? ?) was adopted as a letter its own right, named after a futhorc rune ?sc. In very early Old English the o-e ligature ethel (? ?) also appeared as a distinct letter, likewise named after a rune, ??el. Additionally, the v-v or u-u ligature double-u (W w) was in use.

In the year 1011, a writer named Byrhtfer? ordered the Old English alphabet for numerological purposes. He listed the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet (including ampersand ) first, then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note ond (?) an insular symbol for and:

Рис.

Notes

· Long vowels were marked with macrons. These were not written originally used in Old English but are a more modern invention to distinguish between long and short vowels.

· The alternate forms of g and w (yogh and wynn/wen respectively) were based on the letters used at the time of writing Old English. Today they can be substituted for g and w in modern writing of Old English.

· Yogh originated from an insular form of g and wynn/wen came from a runic letter and was used to represent the non-Latin sound of [ w ]. The letters g and w were introduced later by French scribes. Yogh came to represent [ c ] or [ x ].

Old English pronunciation

Figure

Notes

Figure

Middle English alphabet

At the beginning of the Middle English period, which dates from the Norman Conquest of 1066, the language was still inflectional; at the end of the period the relationship between the elements of the sentence depended basically on word order. As early as 1200 the three or four grammatical case forms of nouns in the singular had been reduced to two, and to denote the plural the noun ending -es had been adopted.

The declension of the noun was simplified further by dropping the final n from five cases of the fourth, or weak, declension; by neutralizing all vowel endings to e (sounded like the a in Modern English sofa), and by extending the masculine, nominative, and accusative plural ending -as, later neutralized also to -es, to other declensions and other cases. Only one example of a weak plural ending, oxen, survives in Modern English; kine and brethren are later formations. Several representatives of the Old English modification of the root vowel in the plural, such as man, men, and foot, feet, also survive.

With the leveling of inflections, the distinctions of grammatical gender in English were replaced by those of natural gender. During this period the dual number fell into disuse, and the dative and accusative of pronouns were reduced to a common form. Furthermore, the Scandinavian they, them were substituted for the original hie, hem of the third person plural, and who, which, and that acquired their present relative functions. The conjugation of verbs was simplified by the omission of endings and by the use of a common form for the singular and plural of the past tense of strong verbs.

In the early period of Middle English, a number of utilitarian words, such as egg, sky, sister, window, and get, came into the language from Old Norse. The Normans brought other additions to the vocabulary. Before 1250 about 900 new words had appeared in English, mainly words, such as baron, noble, and feast, that the Anglo-Saxon lower classes required in their dealings with the Norman-French nobility. Eventually the Norman nobility and clergy, although they had learned English, introduced from the French words pertaining to the government, the church, the army, and the fashions of the court, in addition to others proper to the arts, scholarship, and medicine. Another effect of the Norman Conquest was the use of Carolingian script and a change in spelling. Norman scribes write Old English y as u and u as ou. Cw was changed to qu, hw to wh, and ht to ght.

Midland, the dialect of Middle English derived from the Mercian dialect of Old English, became important during the 14th century, when the counties in which it was spoken developed into centres of university, economic, and courtly life. East Midland, one of the subdivisions of Midland, had by that time become the speech of the entire metropolitan area of the capital, London, and probably had spread south of the Thames River into Kent and Surrey. The influence of East Midland was strengthened by its use in the government offices of London, by its literary dissemination in the works of the 14th-century poets Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and John Lydgate, and ultimately by its adoption for printed works by William Caxton. These and other circumstances gradually contributed to the direct development of the East Midland dialect into the Modern English language.

During the period of this linguistic transformation the other Middle English dialects continued to exist, and dialects descending from them are still spoken in the 20th century. Lowland Scottish, for example, is a development of the Northern dialect.

Modern English alphabet

By about the 15th century Middle English had evolved into Early Modern English, and continued to absorb numerous words from other languages, especially from Latin and Greek. Printing was introduced to Britain by William Caxton in around 1469, and as a result English became increasingly standardised. The first English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, was published in 1604.

During the medieval and early modern periods English spread from England to Wales, Scotland and other parts of the British Isles, and also to Ireland. From the 17th century English was exported to other parts of the world via trade and colonization, and it developed into new varities wherever it went. English-based pidgins and creoles also developed in many places, such as on islands in the Caribbean and Pacific, and in parts of Africa.

The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters - the same letters that are found in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

The classical Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet itself a descendant of the Phoenician alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome. The Etruscan alphabet was in turn adopted and further modified by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.

During the Middle Ages, the Latin alphabet was adapted to Romance languages, direct descendants of Latin, as well as to Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and some Slavic languages. With the age of colonialism and Christian evangelism, the Latin script was spread overseas, and applied to indigenous American, Australian, Austronesian, Austroasiati and African languages. More recently, linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin script or the International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on Latin script) when transcribing or creating written standards for non-European languages, such as the African reference alphabet.

The term Latin alphabet may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article), or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin one, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-derived alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabet. Letter shapes have changed over the centuries, including the creation for Medieval Latin of lower case forms which did not exist in the Classical period.

еnglish modern alphabet

Table

Classical Latin alphabet
Letter	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	Н
Latin name	a · в	be · bз	ce · cз	de · dз	e · з	ef · ef	ge · gз	ha · hв
Latin pronunciation (IPA)	/a?/	/be?/	/ke?/	/de?/	/e?/	/?f/	/?e?/	/ha?/
Letter	I	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q
Latin name	? · о	ka · kв	el · el	em · em	en · en	o · ф	pe · pз	qvм · qы
Latin pronunciation (IPA)	/i?/	/ka?/	/?l/	/?Ю/	/?n/	/o?/	/pe?/	/ku?/
Letter	R	S	T	V	X	Y	Z
Latin name	er · er	es · es	te · tз	vм · ы	ex · ex	? graeca · о Graeca	zeta · zзta
Latin pronunciation (IPA)	/??/	/?s/	/te?/	/u?/	/?ks/	/i?--??rajka/	/?ze?ta/

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)

The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface. The shape of handwritten letters can differ significantly from the standard printed form (and between individuals), especially when written in cursive style. See the individual letter articles for information about letter shapes and origins (follow the links on any of the uppercase letters above).

Written English uses a number of digraphs, such as ch, sh, th, wh, qu, etc., but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet. Some traditions also use two ligatures, ? and ?,or consider the ampersand (&) part of the alphabet.

Figure

Pronunciation

Vowels and diphthongs

This chart shows the vowels and diphthongs used in standard varieties of English spoken in the USA, Australia, England, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland and Wales. There is significant variation in the vowel sounds used within most of these countries, and in other countries where English is spoken.

Table

Notes

AmE = American English (General American), AuE = Australian English, BrE = British English (RP), CaE = Canadian English, IrE = Irish English, NZE = New Zealand English, SAE = South African English, ScE = Scottish English, WeE = Welsh English

Consonants

Figure

2. English orthography

English orthography is the alphabetic spelling system used by the English language. English orthography, like other alphabetic orthographies, exhibits a set of relationships between speech sounds and the corresponding written words. In most other languages, these relationships are regular enough to be called rules. In standard English spelling, however, nearly every sound can be spelled in more than one way, and most spellings and all letters can be pronounced in more than one way and often in many different ways. This is largely due to the complex history of the English language, together with the absence of systematic spelling reforms implemented in English, in contrast to the position in a number of other languages.

In general, English spelling does not reflect the sound changes in the pronunciation of the language that have occurred since the late fifteenth century.

Phonemic representation

As in most alphabetic languages, letters in English orthography may represent a particular sound. For example, the word cat /?k?t/ consists of three letters c, a, and t, in which c represents the sound /k/, a the sound /?/, and t the sound /t/.

Multiple sequences of letters may perform this role as well as single letters. Thus, in the word ship (pronounced /???p/), the digraph sh (two letters) represents the sound /?/. In the word ditch, the three letters tch represent the sound /t?/.

Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple successive sounds. The most common example is the letter x which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in the word six, pronounced /s?ks/).

The same letter (or sequence of letters) may be pronounced in different ways when it occurs in different positions within a word. For instance, the digraph gh represents the sound /f/ at the end of some words, such as rough /?r?f/. At the beginning of syllables (i.e. the syllable onset), the digraph gh is pronounced /ЁА/, as in the word ghost (pronounced /?ЁАo?st/). Conversely, the digraph gh is never pronounced /f/ in syllable onsets and is almost never pronounced /ЁА/ in syllable codas (the proper name Pittsburgh is an exception).

Word origin

Another type of spelling characteristic is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, the letter y represents the sound /?/ in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter i. Thus, the word myth /?m?и/ is of Greek origin, while pith /?p?и/ is a Germanic word. Other examples include ph pronounced /f/ (which is usually spelt f), and ch pronounced /k/ (which is usually spelt c or k) - the use of these spellings for these sounds often mark words that have been borrowed from Greek.

Some researchers such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate a more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollins (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ph for /f/ (like telephone), could occur in an informal text.

Homophone differentiation

Spelling may also be useful to distinguish between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings), although in most cases the reason for the difference is historical and was not introduced for the purpose of making a distinction. For example, the words heir and air are pronounced identically in most dialects (as /???r/). However, they are distinguished from each other orthographically by the addition of the letter h. Another example is the pair of homophones plain and plane, where both are pronounced /?ple?n/ but have two different spellings of the vowel /e?/.

Marking sound changes in other letters

Another function of some letters in English is to provide information about the pronunciation of other letters in the word. Rollins (2004) uses the term "markers" for letters with this function. Letters may mark different types of information. For instance the letter e in the word cottage /?k?t?d?/ indicates that the preceding g is pronounced /d?/, rather than the more common value of g in word-final position as the sound /ЁА/, such as in tag /?t?ЁА/. The letter e also often marks an altered pronunciation of a preceding vowel. In the pair ban and bane, the a of ban has the value /?/, whereas the a of bane is marked by the e as having the value /e?/. In this context, the e is not pronounced, and is referred to as "silent e". A single letter may even fill multiple pronunciation-marking roles simultaneously. For example, in the word wage the e marks not only the change of the a from /?/ to /e?/, but also of the g from /ЁА/ to /d?/.

English orthography does not always provide an underlying representation; sometimes it provides an intermediate representation between the underlying form and the surface pronunciation. This is the case with the spelling of the regular plural morpheme, which is written as either -s (as in tick, ticks and mite, mites) or -es (as in box, boxes). Here the spelling -s is pronounced either /s/ or /z/ (depending on the environment, e.g. ticks /?t?ks/ and pigs /?p?ЁАz/) while -es is usually pronounced /?z/ (e.g. boxes /?b?ks?z/). Thus, there are two different spellings that correspond to the single underlying representation |z| of the plural suffix and the three surface forms. The spelling indicates the insertion of /?/ before the /z/ in the spelling -es, but does not indicate the devoiced /s/ distinctly from the unaffected /z/ in the spelling -s.

The abstract representation of words as indicated by the orthography can be considered advantageous since it makes etymological relationships more apparent to English readers. This makes writing English more complex, but arguably makes reading English more efficient. However, very abstract underlying representations, such as that of Chomsky & Halle (1968) or of underspecification theories, are sometimes considered too abstract to accurately reflect the communicative competence of native speakers. Followers of these arguments believe the less abstract surface forms are more "psychologically real" and thus more useful in terms of pedagogy.

Diacritics

English has some words that can be written with accent marks. These words have mostly been imported from other languages, usually French. As imported words become increasingly naturalised, there is an increasing tendency to omit the accent marks, even in formal writing. For example, words such as role and hotel were first seen with accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accent is almost never used. The words were originally considered foreign - and some people considered that English alternatives were preferable - but today their foreign origin is largely forgotten. Words most likely to retain the accent are those atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, cafe and pate both have a pronounced final e, which would otherwise be silent under the normal English pronunciation rules. However cafe is now sometimes facetiously pronounced "caff", while in pate, the acute accent is helpful to distinguish it from pate.

It was formerly common in American English to use a diaeresis mark to indicate a hiatus: for example, cooperate, dais, reelect. The New Yorker and Technology Review magazines still use it for this purpose, even though it is increasingly rare in modern English. Nowadays the diaeresis is normally left out (cooperate), or a hyphen is used (co-operate). It is, however, still common in loanwords such as naive and Noel.

Written accents are also used occasionally in poetry and scripts for dramatic performances to indicate that a certain normally unstressed syllable in a word should be stressed for dramatic effect, or to keep with the metre of the poetry. This use is frequently seen in archaic and pseudoarchaic writings with the -ed suffix, to indicate that the e should be fully pronounced, as with cursed.

Spelling irregularities

English contains, depending on dialect, 24-27 separate consonant phonemes and 14-20 vowels. However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, so there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple letters, and for those words whose pronunciation is predictable from the spelling, the sounds denoted by the letters depend on the surrounding letters. For example, the digraph th represents two different sounds (the voiced interdental fricative and the voiceless interdental fricative) (see Pronunciation of English th), and the voiceless alveolar grooved fricative can be represented by the letters s and c.

It is, however, not the shortage of letters which makes English spelling irregular. Its irregularities are caused mainly by the use of many different spellings for some of its sounds, such as the sounds /u?/, /i?/ and /o?/ (too, true, shoe, flew, through; sleeve, leave, even, seize, siege; stole, coal, bowl, roll, old, mould), and the use of identical sequences for spelling different sounds (over, oven, move).

Furthermore, English no longer makes any attempt to anglicise the spellings of loanwords, but preserves the foreign spellings, even when they employ exotic conventions like the Polish cz in Czech (rather than *Check) or the Norwegian fj in fjord (although fiord was formerly the most common spelling). In early Middle English, until roughly 1400, most imports from French were respelt according to English rules (e.g. bataille - battle, bouton - button, but not double, trouble). Instead of loans being respelled to conform to English spelling standards, sometimes the pronunciation changes as a result of pressure from the spelling. One example of this is the word ski, which was adopted from Norwegian in the mid-18th century, although it did not become common until 1900. It used to be pronounced /?i?/, which is similar to the Norwegian pronunciation, but the increasing popularity of the sport after the middle of the 20th century helped the /ski?/ pronunciation replace it.

There was also a period when the spelling of a small number of words was altered in what is now regarded as a misguided attempt to make them conform to what were perceived to be the etymological origins of the words. For example, the letter b was added to debt (originally dette) in an attempt to link it to the Latin debitum, and the letter s in island is a misplaced attempt to link it to Latin insula instead of the Old English word оgland, which is the true origin of the English word. The letter p in ptarmigan has no etymological justification whatsoever, only seeking to invoke Greek despite being a Gaelic word.

The spelling of English continues to evolve. Many loanwords come from languages where the pronunciation of vowels corresponds to the way they were pronounced in Old English, which is similar to the Italian or Spanish pronunciation of the vowels, and is the value the vowel symbols [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u] have in the International Phonetic Alphabet. As a result, there is a somewhat regular system of pronouncing "foreign" words in English, and some borrowed words have had their spelling changed to conform to this system. For example, Hindu used to be spelled Hindoo, and the name Maria used to be pronounced like the name Mariah, but was changed to conform to this system.

Commercial advertisers have also had an effect on English spelling. They introduced new or simplified spellings like lite instead of light, thru instead of through, smokey instead of smoky (for "smokey bacon" flavour crisps), and rucsac instead of rucksack. The spellings of personal names have also been a source of spelling innovations: diminutive versions of women's names that sound the same as men's names have been spelled differently: Nikki and Nicky, Toni and Tony, Jo and Joe.

As examples of the idiosyncratic nature of English spelling, the combination ou can be pronounced in at least four different ways: /?/ in famous, /a?/ in loud, /?/ in should, /u?/ in you; and the vowel sound /i?/ in me can be spelt in at least nine different ways: paediatric, me, seat, seem, ceiling, people, machine, siege, phoenix.

Sometimes everyday speakers of English change a counterintuitive pronunciation simply because it is counterintuitive. Changes like this are not usually seen as "standard", but can become standard if used enough. An example is the word miniscule, which still competes with its original spelling of minuscule, though this might also be because of analogy with the word mini. A further example is the modern pronunciation of tissue.

Combinations of vowel letters

To reduce dialectal difficulties, the sound values given here correspond to the conventions at IPA for English. This table includes H, W and Y when they represent vowel sounds. If no information is given, it is assumed that the vowel is in a stressed syllable.

Deriving the pronunciation of an English word from its spelling requires not only a careful knowledge of the rules given below (many of which are not explicitly known even by native speakers: speakers merely learn the spelling of a word along with its pronunciation) and their many exceptions, but also:

· a knowledge of which syllables are stressed and which are unstressed (not derivable from the spelling: compare hallow and allow)

· which combinations of vowels represent monosyllables and which represent disyllables (ditto: compare please and create).

Table

Spelling	Major val. (IPA)	Examples of major value	Minor values (IPA)	Examples of minor value	Exceptions
a	· before multiple consonants · final vowel in word · followed by 2 or more unstressed syllables · next syllable contains /?/	/?/	hatchet, banner, marry acrobat, cat national, camera, reality arid, granite, palace	/e?/	ache, bass, chamber nationhood	/i/ karaoke /??/ father /?/ yacht
	· before -nge, -ste · before single consonant · before cons + (-le or r+vowel) · before heterosyllabic vowel	/e?/	arrange, waste grace, famous, violate table, hatred, April chaos, aorta	/?/ /?/ /?/	many, any manor, have chocolate, orange	/??/ gala, sonata
	before final r or r + cons. (and in derived terms)	/??/	bar, cart barred, marring			/??/ scarce
	before r + vowel	/??/	uncaring, wary, various, glare	/?/	Paris	/??/ are
	word-final	/?/	lemma, banana			/i/ bologna
	in word-final -ary	/?/	ordinary, necessary
	after /w/ except before /k/, /?/, /?/	/?/	watch, warrior, quantity	/?/	quango
	after /w/ before final r or r + cons.	/??/	warning, dwarf, war
	unstressed	/?/	another, about, woman	O	artistically
	unstressed, in -age	/?/	damage, bondage
aa, ah	/??/	baa, blah			/e?/ quaalude
ae (?)	usually	/i?/	encyclopaedia (encyclop?dia), paediatrician (p?diatrician)	/?/	aesthetic (?sthetic)	/e?/ reggae (regg?)
	before r	/??/	aerial (?rial), aeroplane
ai, ay	stressed	/e?/	bait, cocaine, day	/?/ /a?/	said, again, says samurai, kayak, aye	/?/ plaid /i?/ quay
	before r	/??/	cairn, millionaire, dairy
	unstressed	/?/	bargain, mountain	/?/	Britain
ao	/e?/	gaol	/a?/	Taoism	/o?/ pharaoh
au, aw	/??/	taut, author, lawn,	/?/ /??/	sausage, because,	/e?/ gauge /o?/ mauve
e	· before single consonant · before cons + (-le or r+vowel) · final, only vowel in word · final, Greek loans · before heterosyllabic vowel	/i?/	receding, detail, gene metre, secret be, she simile, catastrophe neon	/e?/ /?/ O	ukulele, cafe, crepe metal, lemon, heron
	· before multiple consonants · final vowel in word · followed by 2 or more unstressed syllables · next syllable contains /?/	/?/	better, fetch, merry get, watershed legacy, elegant, delicate crevice, perish, epicness	/i?/	lethal axes (plural of axis) legally evil	/?/ pretty
	before final r or r + cons. (and in derived terms)	/??/	herd, kerb, referral	/??/	clerk, sergeant
	before r + vowel	/??/	serious, series, here	/??/ /?/	therefore,	/??/ were
	word-final	O	mate, discipline, starve plague	/i?/	recipe
	unstressed	/?/	hatchet, target, poet	/?/	taken, decency,
	usd, before heterosyllabic vowel	/i/	create, area, atheist, hideous
ea	usually	/i?/	beach, eating, please	/?/	bread, healthy,	/e?/ break,
	before r + cons.	/??/	earth, learn, early	/??/	hearty, hearth	/??/ beard
	before final r or r + vowel (and in derived terms)	/??/	clear, hearing, yearly	/??/	bear, pear, swear
eau	/o?/	bureau, plateau, tableau	/ju?/	beauty	/?/ bureaucracy
ee	usually	/i?/	bee, feed			/e?/ matinee,
	before r	/??/	cheering, beer, eerie
ei, ey	usually	/e?/	veil, reign, obey	/i?/ /a?/	seize, key, geyser height,	/?/ heifer, leisure /a?/ eye
	after c	/i?/	deceive, ceiling, conceit
	before r	/??/	heir, their	/??/	weird, weir,
	unstressed	/?/	foreign, counterfeit
	unstressed, word-final	/i/	monkey, curtsey, jersey
eo	/?/	leopard, jeopardy	/i?/	people	/o?/ yeoman /
eu(e), ew(e), ieu, iew	usually	/ju?/	feudal, queue, dew, ewe, lieu, v			/o?/ sew
	after /r/, /?/, /?/, /j/, cons. + /l/	/u?/	rheumatism, jewel, blew
	before r	/j??/	amateur, neural, Newry
	both of the above	/??/	Jewry, pleurisy
i	· before single consonant · before cons + (-le or r+vowel) · before -nd, -ld, -gh, -gn · word-final · before heterosyllabic vowel	/a?/	shine, cited, guide title, idle, vibrant wild, kind, sighed, ensign alumni, alibi, radii vial, quiet, prior, pious	/?/	pivot, give, engine wind (one meaning)	/i?/ machine, ski
	· before multiple consonants · final vowel in word · followed by 2 or more unstressed syllables · next syllable contains /?/ · before cons. + e/i + vowel	/?/	hitch, fiddle, mirror bit cinema, liberty, military finish, spirit, minute hideous, position, Sirius	/a?/	pint, ninth silently whitish	/?/ meringue /i??/ ski(ing)
	before final r or r + cons. (and in derived terms)	/??/	bird, fir, stirrer			/??/ menhir
	before r + vowel	/a??/	hire, firing, enquiry
	unstressed	/?/	livid, typical	/?/	pencil, cousin	O business
	usd, before heterosyllabic vowel	/i/	familiar, alien, radii, idiot
ie	finally	/a?/	die, tie
	medially	/i?/	field, series, siege	/a?/	flies, tries	/?/ sieve /?/
	before r	/??/	pier, fierce, bulkier
o	· before multiple consonants · final vowel in word · followed by 2 or more unstressed syllables · next syllable contains /?/	/?/ or /??/	dot, doctor, torrent opera, colonise, cooperate topic, solid, promise	/?/ /o?/ /u?/	won, monkey, front gross, comb, brokenly tomb, womb	/?/ wolf
	· before single consonant · before cons + (-le or r+vowel) · word-final · before heterosyllabic vowel (inc. unstressed)	/o?/	omen, grove, total noble, cobra banjo, go boa, poet, stoic cooperate	/?/ /u?/ /?/ /?/	moral, proper, shone to, who, move, lose come, love, done purpose, Europe	/?/ woman /?/ women
	before r	/??/	ford, boring, more	/?/	for, morning
	after w, before r	/??/	word, work, worst			/??/ worn
	unstressed	/?/	eloquent, wanton, author
oa	usually	/o?/	boat, coal, load			/??/ broad
	before r	/??/	boar, coarse
oe (?)	usually	/i?/	amoeba (am?ba), coelacanth (c?lacanth), phoenix (ph?nix)
	finally	/o?/	toe (t?), foe (f?)	/u?/	shoe (sh?), canoe (cano?)	/?/ does (d?s)
	unstressed	/?/	oedema (?dema)
oeu	/u?/	manoeuvre
oi, oy	usually	/??/	coin, boy
	before r	/w??/	reservoir, memoir, repertoire	/???/	loir	/wa??/ choir
oo	usually	/u?/	hoop, booze	/?/	wool, foot, soot	/o?/ brooch
	before k, d	/?/	look, wood	/u?/	food, brood,	/?/ blood, flood
	before r	/??/	door, mooring	/??/	poor
ou	stressed	/a?/	out, aloud, bough	/u?/ /?/ /o?/	soup, you, through touch, trouble, country	/?/ courier, should /?/ cough
	before r	/??/	tourist, contour, pour	/a??/ /??/	hour, our, devour journey,	/?/ courier /?/ courage
	unstressed	/?/	camouflage, labour, nervous
ow	stressed	/a?/	cow, sow, allow	/o?/	know, show	/?/ acknowledge
	before r	/a??/	dowry
	unstressed	/o?/	yellow, rainbow, narrow
u	· before multiple consonants · final vowel in word	/?/	butter, dump, current	/?/	put, full, pudding
	· before single consonant · before cons + (-le or r+vowel) · before heteros. vowel (inc. unstressed) · word-final	/ju?/	luminous, mute, tuba bugle, rubric duel, fatuous, druid, January	/?/	sugar	/?/ busy
	above after /r/, /?/, /?/, /j/, cons. + /l/	/u?/	rule, chute, June, flu truant, fluent, menstruate
	before final r or r + cons. (and in derived terms)	/??/	curdle, burr, furry
	before r + vowel	/j??/	lure, purity, curing	/j?/	failure	/?/ bury
	above after /r/, /?/, /?/, /j/, cons. + /l/	/??/	rural, jury, plural
	after g, before e, i	O	guess, disguise, tongue	/ju?/ /w/	argue, ague linguistics, segue
	unstressed	/?/	supply			/?/ minute,
ue, ui	usually	/ju?/	cue, hue, nuisance			/we?/ suede
	above after /r/, /?/, /?/, /j/, cons. + /l/	/u?/	blue, tissue, fruit, juice
uy	/a?/	buy, guyed
y	· before multiple consonants · followed by 2 or more unstressed syllables · next syllable contains /?/	/?/	myth, cryptic cylinder, typical, pyramid cynic	/a?/	hyphen, psyche cyclically
	· before single consonant · before cons + (-le or r+vowel)	/a?/	typing, style, paralyze cycle, cypress sky, supply, bye
	before final r or r + cons. (and in derived terms)	/??/	myrtle, myrrh
	before r + vowel	/a??/	lyre, tyrant, gyrate
	unstressed	/?/	sibyl, martyr
	unstressed, word-final	/i/	city, happy

Consonants

Notes:

· In the tables, the hyphen has two different meanings. A hyphen after the letter indicates that it must be at the beginning of a syllable, e.g. j- in jumper and ajar. A hyphen before the letter indicates that it cannot be at the beginning of a word, e.g. -ck in sick and ticket.

· More specific rules take precedence over more general ones, e.g. "c- before e, i or y" takes precedence over "c".

· Where the letter combination is described as "word-final", inflectional suffixes may be added without changing the pronunciation, e.g. catalogues.

· The dialect used is RP.

· Isolated foreign borrowings are excluded.

Table

Table . Combinations of other consonant and vowel letters

Spelling	Major value (IPA)	Examples of major value	Min. va	Examples of minor value	Exceptions
ah	/??/	blah
al	/?l/	pal, talcum, algae, alp	/??l/	bald, falcon
alf	/??f/ (RP) /?f/ (GA)	calf, half	/?l/	alfalfa, malfeasance	/?lf/ palfrey
alk	/??k/	walk, chalking, talkative	/?lk/	alkaline, grimalkin	/?lk/ balkanise
all	/??l/ /?l/	call, fallout, smaller shall, callus, fallow	/?l/ /(?)l/	wallet, swallow allow, dialled	/?l/ (GA) marshmallow,
alm	/??m/ (all three examples have alt. pronunc.)	calm (also: /??lm/), almond (also: /?lm/), palmistry (also: /??lm/)	/?lm/ /??lm/	dalmatian, salmonella almanac (also: /?lm/), almost	/?m/ salmon /(?)lm/ signalman
alt	/?lt/ (RP) /??lt/ (GA)	alter, malt, salty, basalt	/?lt/ /?	alto, shalt, saltation altar, asphalt	/?lt/ gestalt (GA) /(?)lt/ royalty,
aoh, oh	/o?/	pharaoh, oh
unstressed ci- before a vowel	/?/	special, gracious	/si/	species
-cqu	/kw/	acquaint, acquire	/k/	lacquer, racquet
word-final -ed morpheme after	/?d/	waited
word-final -ed morpheme after	/t/	topped, surfed	/?d/	biped, unfed
word-final -ed morpheme after	/d/	climbed, failed, ordered	/?d/	imbed, misled, infrared
eh	/e?/	eh
word-final -es morpheme**	/?z/	washes, boxes
unstressed ex- before a vowel or h	/??z/	exist, examine, exhaust	/?ks/	exhale
gu- before a	/?w/	bilingual, guano,	/?/	guard, guarantee
word-final -le after a consonant	/?l/	little, table
-(a)isle	/a??l/	aisle, isle, enisle, lisle
word-final -ngue	/?/	tongue, harangue, meringue (dessert)	/??e?/	dengue (also /??i/), distingue, merengue
old	/o?ld/	blindfold, older, bold	/?ld/	scaffold, kobold (also /?l
olk	/o?k/	yolk, folk
oll	/?l/	doll, follow, colletc.,	/o?l/	roll, stroller, polling,
olm	/?lm/	olm, dolmen	/o?lm/	enrolment, holmium	/o?m/ holm (oak)
ong	/??/ (RP) /???/ (GA)	wrong, strong, song	/??/	Congress, congregation
qu-	/kw/	queen, quick	/k/	liquor, mosquito
quar- before consonant	/kw??(r)/	quarter, quart
word-final -que	/k/	mosque, bisque	/ke?/	risque	/kju?/ barbeque
word-final -re after a consonant	/?r/	ogre
ro	/r?/	rod	/ro?/	roll	/?(r)/ iron
unstressed sci- before a vowel	/t?/	conscience (/?/ in RP)	/si/	omniscient (RP only)
sci- (stressed)	/sa?/	science
-scle	/s?l/	corpuscle, muscle
-se (noun)	/s/	house, mouse

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