Let’s try some examples to think about this. However, the alphabet also has a built-in support for learning letter-sound associations. Letter names in the English alphabet are iconic, meaning that most letter names hold a clue to one sound that the letter makes. What makes written English challenging to learn is that more than a single letter can represent more than one sound - and to complicate it further, the same sound can often be represented by multiple letters or letter patterns. For example, English has eight different spelling patterns for long /a/: cake, sail, ray, they, eight, vein, great, baby. Notice that English has more sounds (44) than printed letters (26)! This is one reason why learning to read is challenging for young children and for second language learners. You can learn more about the spoken sounds of English here: 44 Phonemes of English. There are 44 phonemes or speech sounds in English. Of those individual speech sounds, 25 are consonant sounds and 19 are vowel sounds. A consonant is any sound that is produced by closing or slowing the flow of air through our vocal tract. For example, say the word bee and feel how your lips close together to make the /b/ sound at the beginning of the word. A vowel is produced by open airflow without friction in the vowel tract. We produce different vowel sounds by changing our tongue’s position and the shape of our lips. For example, think about how the vowel sounds change and feel in your mouth as you say the words aloud: feet, fat, foot.
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