A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound in English that distinguishes one phrase from one other. Since sounds can’t be written, we use letters to characterize or stand for the sounds. A grapheme is the written illustration (a letter or cluster of letters) of the phoneme sound.
In whole, in English, there are 44 sounds (phonemes), 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds. In the earlier submit, we’ve seen 20 vowel sounds. On this submit, we will see the 24 consonant sounds (phonemes).
The breakdown of those 24 consonant phonemes is:
The English alphabet has 21 consonant letters, however a few of these letters can characterize a couple of sound. For instance, the letter ‘c’ may be pronounced as /ok/ (as in “cat”) or /s/ (as in “metropolis”). Sure consonant sounds are represented by mixtures of letters, like ‘ch’ (as in “chair”), ‘sh’ (as in “shoe”), and ‘th’ (as in “skinny” or “this”). If you account for all of the distinct consonant sounds, together with these represented by letter mixtures, you get a complete of 24 consonant phonemes. Additionally, ‘x’, ‘q’, and ‘c’ don’t have distinctive phonemes.
- C-sounds that make a /ok/ in crop, crack, creep and
- C-sounds that make an /s/ in central, cent, and cite.
- Q-sounds are additionally in phrases that include the letters ‘kw’ as in walkway, parkway, and awkward.
- X-sounds are additionally in phrases with ‘cks’ as in backstop, rocks, and necks
So, 21 consonants minus ‘x’, ‘q’, and ‘c’ is eighteen sounds. However, there are additionally mixtures of consonants that result in distinctive sounds. These mixtures are known as digraphs.
Now, coming to consonant digraphs, the mixtures of consonants that make distinctive sounds. You may mix any two consonants after which it may well produce a novel sound. Now, there’s a little bit of subjectivity right here. For instance, in case you mix ‘p’ and ‘h’, ‘ph’, some will say it’s a distinctive sound since you breathe out, whereas some will say it’s already lined within the ‘f’ consonant sound as in “fats”.
To settle this debate, there’s a physique known as the Worldwide Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The IPA presently acknowledges 6 consonant digraphs. It may add extra sooner or later, however presently it acknowledges 6 consonant digraphs are they’re:
- ‘ch’ as in “watch” or “youngster”
- ‘sh’ as in “want” or “brief”
- ‘zh’ as in “treasure” or “style” ; please observe the consonant ‘g’ (counted amongst 18) may have the sound of “glow” or “go”. That is additionally an extra sound of consonant ‘g’.
- ‘ng’ as in “ring” or “sting”
- ‘ck’ as in “again”
- ‘ph’ as in “cellphone”
So, in whole, in line with IPA the consonant sounds are 24 (18 single and 6 digraphs). Now, you could say there are lots of digraphs which might be current. For instance, ‘ss’ as in “chess” or ‘wh’ as in “what” or ‘th’ as in “factor” or “thunder” and lots of such mixtures are potential. In whole there could possibly be roughly 75 consonant digraphs and 50 vowel digraphs which might be potential. However, there’s debate that ‘wr’ as in “wrench” is nothing however the ‘r’ sound whereas any person will say it’s not. So, presently, the acknowledged sounds are 44 in whole – 24 consonant sounds (18 single consonant sounds and 6 digraph sounds) and 20 vowel sounds (12 monophthongs (single vowel sounds) and eight diphthongs (two vowel sounds)).
The 24 Consonant Phonemes (Sounds) in English are:
The 20 Vowel Phonemes (Sounds) in English are:
Hope that is helpful, thanks.
You might wish to learn: CogAT Verbal Sentence Completion Observe, AEPS 3 for Early Age Kids, & Nurturing Curiosity in Kids
