The English alphabet

The sounds of the letters

We will be carrying out a study of English pronunciation for students of the English language. We will be studying the vowel and consonant sounds. We will see how the pronunciation of letters change depending on the words they are found in, intonation and stress. Firstly, it is a good idea to start with the alphabet. This will help us to learn the sounds of most of the consonants in the English language and some of the vowel sounds.

It is preferable just to listen and repeat each letter of the alphabet as you hear it. You should also follow the basic advice on identifying similarities between the vowel sounds you can hear in each letter. In future units we will look in more detail at pronunciation and techniques on how to say English sounds and phonemes.

Listen to the English alphabet ...

image of the letters of the alphabet.

Distinguish vowel phoneme similarities between some of the letters of the alphabet.

It is very useful to identify vowel sounds that some of these letters have in common. Each letter of the same colour shares the same vowel sound. For example, the vowel sound in the letters: b, c, d, e, g, p, t, v, has the same value. Listen for this vowel sound in each group and try to reproduce it.

The vowel sounds that these letters have in common are:

b, c, d, e, g, p, t, v, = ...

a, h, j, k = ...

f, l, m, n, s, x, z, = ...

i, y, = ...

q, u, w, = ...

Note: "w" also has a second vowel sound.

Exercise on the alphabet 1...
Exercise on the alphabet 2...