I'd like to buy a vowel!

Students of English often struggle with the English vowel system. Not only are the sounds confusing, but our writing system doesn't really help. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the 10 most basic of vowel sounds in English. For you linguists out there, you may realize that some of these vowel sounds are actually diphthongs, but we're not going to worry about that now. Plus, many phonics systems, such as Reading Horizons [1], focus on these 10 sounds as the core vowel sounds.

Written Letter	Short Sound	Long Sound
Aa	ă	ā
Ee	ĕ	ē
Ii	ĭ	ī
Oo	ŏ	ō
Uu	ŭ	ū

There they are. The video below demonstrates the short and long sounds of each of these vowels.

So now what? Well, know what the sounds are is only part of it. Knowing when to use them is another story. We won't go into all of the rules right now but here's a quick and easy rule.

In single syllable words that begin with a consonant and end with one, use the short form of the vowel. The video had a few examples: băt, bĕt, bĭt, pŏt, and pŭtt [2]. I'm sure you can think of a bunch more.

I know this isn't groundbreaking, but hopefully it might be helpful for teachers and learners. And, as always, stay tuned for more!


[1] For a detailed post on vowels, check out some of Heidi Hyte's blog posts. Heidi works for Reading Horizons and is a phonics guru.
[2] Put is irregular.