Consonants – Page 2

What are Vowels and Consonants?

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020lucyteachchildren2 Comments

The English Language is created through the different combinations of 44 sounds (phonemes), 20 vowels and 24 consonants. In our written language we refer to the letters of the alphabet as being consonant or vowel letters depending on which type of sound they are representing.

Vowel sounds allow the air to flow freely, causing the chin to drop noticeably, whilst consonant sounds are produced by restricting the air flow.

Vowel sounds are usually (in the UK Education System) split into two main categories based on sound quality:

‘Short’ vowel sounds, due to the short duration of the sound being made. The sound cannot be held onto without becoming distorted
‘Long’ vowel sounds, due to the length of their pronunciation. These can often be held without distorting their sound.

The letters of the alphabet that we normally associate as being the vowel letters are: a, e, i, o and u. The letter ‘y’ is sometimes referred to as an honorary or semi vowel as it is used to replace one of the other vowel letters in words such as: fly, shy, why or my.

All words in the English language have at least one vowel sound in them so the written version must have at least one vowel letter in it.

Consonant sounds are made (produced) when the air flow is being restricted in some way, for example, changes in tongue position resulting in the mouth not opening as wide. This means that the jaw doesn’t drop noticeably, which is different to vowel sounds.

The letters of the alphabet that usually represent the consonant sounds are: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z.

What are CVC Words?

July 16, 2020July 15, 2020lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

VC Letters 1

The letter C means a consonant letter is required.

The letter V means that a vowel letter is required.

So, a CVC word is one that has a consonant letter followed by a vowel and then a consonant as in the following examples:

cat dog mat

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet and these can be split in to two categories:

Vowels – ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’ and the letter ‘y’, when it is used as a semi-vowel, in words such as by, my and fly.

Consonants – ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘f’, ‘g’, ‘h’, ‘j’, ‘k’, ‘l’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘v’, ‘w’, ‘x’, ‘z’ and the letter ‘y’ when it is being used as a consonant, in words such as yak, yam and yellow.

Schools will often use the abbreviation CV, CVC, CVCC words when sending home phonics work or suggestions for phonics games. It is also used by many phonics computer games, activity programs and schemes.

Here are some examples for:

CV & VC	CVC	CVCC
as	bat	lamp
at	cat	milk
be	dog	tent
by	fog	hump
he	hot	band
if	pig	tilt
in	peg	want
is	lap	pond
it	mop	jump
me	net	just
my	put	nest
no	but	send
on	set	went
so	tap	wind
to	zig	bend

The Consonant Sounds with their Most Common Letter and Letter Combinations

November 7, 2019lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Consonants 2

There are 24 consonant sounds in the English language. A consonant sound is made (produced) when the air flow is being restricted in some way, which means that the mouth doesn’t open as wide and so the jaw doesn’t drop noticeably, which is different from vowel sounds.

Here is a list of just some of the most commonly seen letter and letter combinations used to represent the 24 consonant sounds. For a more comprehensive lists check out our English Phoneme Chart or Alphabet Keyboard which can be found on our ‘Phonemes’ page: bit.ly/1Qgc9dA

/b,(b)/ bin, rabbit
/k,(k)/ cat, key, duck, queen, anchor, broccoli
/ch,(ʧ)/ church, watch
/d,(d)/ dog, ladder, towed
/f,(f)/ fish, puffin, phone, laugh
/g,(g)/ girl, digger, ghost
/h,(h)/ hen, who
/j,(ʤ)/ jigsaw, giant, bridge
/l,(l)/ lion, llama
/m,(m)/ man, hammer, lamb
/n,(n)/ nest, penny, knife, gnome
/ng,(ŋ)/ king, sink
/p,(p)/ panda, hippo
/r,(r)/ robin, lorry, wrist
/s,(s)/ sun, dress, city, geese, castle
/sh,(ʃ)/ ship, chef, delicious, initials, sugar
/t,(t)/ tent, butterfly, jumped
/th,(θ)/ thumb
/th,(ð)/ feather, breathe
/v,(v)/ van, sleeve, of
/w,(w)/ well, whale, penguin
/y,(j)/ yo-yo, euro
/z,(z)/ zero, puzzle, sneeze, cheese, is
/zh,(Ʒ)/ measure, television

What are Vowels and Consonants?

October 10, 2019lucyteachchildren14 Comments

Vowels & Consonants 1

Vowel sounds allow the air to flow freely, causing the chin to drop noticeably, whilst consonant sounds are produced by restricting the air flow.

Vowel sounds are usually (in the UK Education System) split into two main categories based on sound quality:

‘Short’ vowel sounds, due to the short duration of the sound being made. The sound cannot be held onto without becoming distorted
‘Long’ vowel sounds, due to the length of their pronunciation. These can often be held without distorting their sound.

The letters of the alphabet that we normally associate as being the vowel letters are: a, e, i, o and u. The letter ‘y’ is sometimes referred to as an honorary vowel as it is used to replace one of the other vowel letters in words such as: fly or my.

All words in the English language have at least one vowel sound in them so the written version must have at least one vowel letter in it.

The letters of the alphabet that usually represent the consonant sounds are: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z.

The Consonant Sounds with their Most Common Letter and Letter Combinations

November 8, 2018lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

/b,(b)/ bin, rabbit
/k,(k)/ cat, key, duck, queen, anchor, broccoli
/ch,(ʧ)/ church, watch
/d,(d)/ dog, ladder, towed
/f,(f)/ fish, puffin, phone, laugh
/g,(g)/ girl, digger, ghost
/h,(h)/ hen, who
/j,(ʤ)/ jigsaw, giant, bridge
/l,(l)/ lion, llama
/m,(m)/ man, hammer, lamb
/n,(n)/ nest, penny, knife, gnome
/ng,(ŋ)/ king, sink
/p,(p)/ panda, hippo
/r,(r)/ robin, lorry, wrist
/s,(s)/ sun, dress, city, geese, castle
/sh,(ʃ)/ ship, chef, delicious, initials, sugar
/t,(t)/ tent, butterfly, jumped
/th,(θ)/ thumb
/th,(ð)/ feather, breathe
/v,(v)/ van, sleeve, of
/w,(w)/ well, whale, penguin
/y,(j)/ yo-yo, euro
/z,(z)/ zero, puzzle, sneeze, cheese, is
/zh,(Ʒ)/ measure, television

Sounds in the English (UK) Language

October 18, 2018lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Blog Phonics

The English Language is created through the different combinations of 44 sounds (phonemes), 20 vowels and 24 consonants. Vowel sounds allow the air to flow freely, causing the chin to drop noticeably, whilst consonant sounds are produced by restricting the air flow.

Vowel sounds are usually (in the UK Education System) split into two main categories based on sound quality:

‘Short’ vowel sounds, due to the short duration of the sound being made. The sound cannot be held onto without becoming distorted
‘Long’ vowel sounds, due to the length of their pronunciation. These can often be held without distorting their sound.

Because the English language is so rich and diverse it is very difficult to create a ‘phonics’ system that caters for all. Every region that speaks the English language has its own accent with variations in the way that a word is pronounced.

Across England we all spell words the same but we certainly do not say them all the same even though we all use the same 44 sounds. In the English language the 44 sounds can be represented by over 280 letter combinations.

So accents have arisen from regions applying different phonemes (sounds) to graphemes (letters) when they pronounce words. The regions still use the same sounds and letters, they just associate them differently.

However, for general educational and learning purposes the English language’s phonics system has been standardized, this is known as the ‘Received Pronounced’ (RP) English, and is used in comprehensive English dictionaries and translation dictionaries. The RP is based on a southern accent, sound to letter relationships basis.

This can make teaching phonics a little tricky; the key is to teach the sound to letter relationships which best suit the children being taught in relation to their regional accent. It is important to remember that children’s knowledge of the sounds that make words is based on how you speak to them naturally and not a strict standardized set of sounds.

What are Graphemes & Phonemes?

September 27, 2018lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Graphemes are the alphabet letters, or letter combinations, that represent a single sound in a written word.

An example of a single letter representing a single sound (a grapheme) can be seen in the following words: sat, pat and dog.

Some sounds are represented by two letters and are called digraphs such as the ‘ch’ in ‘chip’ or ‘sh’ in ‘shop’ or ‘ea’ in ‘head’ and the ‘ai’ in ‘rain’.

Other sounds can be represented by 3 (trigraphs) or 4 (quadgraph) letter combinations such as ‘igh’ in ‘light’ and ‘eigh’ in ‘eight’.

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound of a language; which we blend together to form words.

The English Language has 44 phonemes, 24 consonants and 20 vowels, represented by the unique symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The 44 phonemes of English are represented by more than 280 letter or letter combinations. Most letters therefore never make just one sound and that sound can be made by more than one letter or letter combination.

We have created over 1,000 videos that split words into their individual phonemes, showing which letters are making which sound in each word. You can access these videos in two ways:

If you want to know which letter or letter combination represents a sound, click on the relevant phoneme button on the English Phoneme Chart;
If you want to know what sound a letter or letter combination makes, click on the relevant letter or letter combination on the Alphabet Keyboard.

We hope you find these useful.

The Consonant Sounds with Their Most Common Letter and Letter Combinations

November 30, 2017lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Bin Girl

/b,(b)/ bin, rabbit
/k,(k)/ cat, key, duck, queen, anchor, broccoli
/ch,(ʧ)/ church, watch
/d,(d)/ dog, ladder, towed
/f,(f)/ fish, puffin, phone, laugh
/g,(g)/ girl, digger, ghost
/h,(h)/ hen, who
/j,(ʤ)/ jigsaw, giant, bridge
/l,(l)/ lion, llama
/m,(m)/ man, hammer, lamb
/n,(n)/ nest, penny, knife, gnome
/ng,(ŋ)/ king, sink
/p,(p)/ panda, hippo
/r,(r)/ robin, lorry, wrist
/s,(s)/ sun, dress, city, geese, castle
/sh,(ʃ)/ ship, chef, delicious, initials, sugar
/t,(t)/ tent, butterfly, jumped
/th,(θ)/ thumb
/th,(ð)/ feather, breathe
/v,(v)/ van, sleeve, of
/w,(w)/ well, whale, penguin
/y,(j)/ yo-yo, euro
/z,(z)/ zero, puzzle, sneeze, cheese, is
/zh,(Ʒ)/ measure, television

Sounds in the English (UK) Language

November 23, 2017lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Phonics Chart with Phonemes — Received Pronounced English (UK) Phonetic Alphabet

Vowel sounds are usually (in the UK Education System) split into two main categories based on sound quality:

‘Short’ vowel sounds, due to the short duration of the sound being made. The sound cannot be held onto without becoming distorted
‘Long’ vowel sounds, due to the length of their pronunciation. These can often be held without distorting their sound.

What are Phonemes?

October 30, 2017October 30, 2017lucyteachchildrenLeave a comment

Phonics Chart with Phonemes

Date Originally Posted: 12/10/17

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound of a language; which we blend together to form words.

The English Language has 44 phonemes, 24 consonants and 20 vowels, represented by the unique symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

We have created over 1,000 videos that split words into their individual phonemes, showing which letters are making which sound in each word. You can access these videos in two ways:

If you want to know which letter or letter combination represents a sound, click on the relevant phoneme button on the English Phoneme Chart;
If you want to know what sound a letter or letter combination makes, click on the relevant letter or letter combination on the Alphabet Keyboard.

We hope you find these useful.