500 Common Words: Spellings of Vowel Sounds

Note 1: AR (with no silent E) has 2 sounds, either the open sound in "star" and "dark" or the Long A sound in "parent" and "carry."
WA often has the open A sound in "water" and "watch," but it can sound like the A in "cat," as in "wag" and "wax."

Note 2: There is a major phonics rule: "an E at the end makes the vowel sound long." This refers to a silent E. These are indicated with a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e.

Note 3: Sometime "ui" has a simple I sound, as in "build" and "biscuit."

Note 4: "Say" has an A sound, but "said" sounds like "sed" and "says" sounds like "sez." Notice how the final S has a Z sound.

Note 5: IE and EI have their own rules and several sounds. Check back soon for a new page on these.

Note 6: OW can sound like O as in "snow" or the double vowel as in "down" or "now."

Note 7: The U in Up is the most simple sound. You can hear this sound in many common words (with any spelling) or on the unstressed syllables of longer words.
Notice that O often reduces to this sound as in color, come, does, done, money, nothing, other, mother, work. Study the sounds of O.

Note 8: The OU/OW in Ouch is a double vowel sound. OW can sound like O as noted above, and OU does have several sounds.

Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different meanings or spellings.
If a sound has more than one spelling, there might be several homophones.
Examples are: plain and plane, tail and tale, hear and here, piece and peace, for and four, two and too, would and wood, our and hour.

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Vowel Sound	Spellings	Examples	Exceptions
A in Cat	simple--only A	ask, cat, bad, black, fact, had, last, map, math, pass	laugh
A by N or M	only AN, AM (no silent E)	am, an, began, family, land, ran, understand
A in All	ar, al, au, aw, wa (no silent E)	car, dark, star, call, fall, cause, auto, draw, saw, water, watch	was (wuz), "ar" and "wa" have 2 sounds, see below*
A in Late	a_e*, ai, ay, ey	age, face, state, air, main, wait, say, way, they	there, weight
E in Met	simple--only E, also ea	end, get, help, less, men, never, test, yellow, yes, head, ready	again, any, many, been, friend, said, says*
E in Need	ee, ea, e_e, e as last letter in small words, y as last letter	deep, feel, feet, keep, hear, near, reach, year, here, be, he, beauty, city	ie/ei as in field, receive--these spellings have several sounds*
I in Sit	simple, only I	big, city, fish, give, interest, listen, quick, ship, wind	busy, live (as in "I live here"), pretty, minute (minit), "ui"*
I in Hi	i_e, igh, y as last letter	drive, fine, like, side, high, light, night, by, cry, why	find, kind, island, idea
O in Hot	simple--only O, ought	cross, dog, long, off, problem, brought, thought	"ought" is usually this sound, but "ough" may have a long O or U
O in No	oa, o_e, or, ow, o as last letter	boat, road, close, home, horse, morning, grow, slow, go, no	course, four, door, war, warm, "ow" has 2 sounds*
U in Up	simple--only U, any spelling if sound is reduced	but, such, sun, up, above, come, does, early, island, the	see Note 7 below*
U in Rule	ue, u_e, oo, ew	blue, true, rule, too, room, food, new, knew	do, group, move, through, two, you
YU in Music	pu_e, cu_e, fu_e, mu_e, u_e, ew with these letters	compute, cute, fuse, muse, use, few, pew	"muse" is the original word behind "music"
Ö in Good	oo, u, ou	book, foot, look, full, put, could, should, would
OU/OW in Ouch	ou, ow	about, hour, south, round, down, how, power, town, vowel	both spellings have more than one sound*