hookt on foniks

truly this will save the literacy rates

Occasionally, there is discourse about phonics, or the practice of teaching children to read by helping them learn to sound out words. This is certainly how I was taught to read (English), and it is strange that some wish to abandon it—though of course I think sight words, words that students should simply recognize on sight, are useful to discuss alongside phonics.

I assume the controversy has something to do with how adult readers tend to have a vast collection of sight words¹¹ It might be more correct to say they have sight morphemes or something like that—presumably the fact that rolls dice “diabatic” and “adiabatic” resemble each other is relevant to adult readers, for example. and don’t tend to sound things out so much—and consequently, adult readers do not understand phonics very well.

Since I understand phonics, I figured that I could write an explanation that would fix this issue. This is mostly intended to explain how to read, and not so much how to spell.

Consonants

I’ve covered a lot of this before, feel free to skip to vowels. Though maybe the s and t sections might be interesting.

Simple consonants

These are as easy as it gets; these letters are almost always simple representations of a consistent single sound, except when they show up in particular digraphs.

• b — bad, dab

• d — dad, add

• f — fad, af

• h — had

• j — jump, haj

• k — koala, hook

• l — lad, ball

• m — mad, dim

• n — nod, ran

• p — pad, map

• r — rad, bar

• v — vat, live

• z — zap, pizzazz

Including d here is arguable; for younger speakers, it often makes a j sound in dream, drive, or other dr words. I bet there are also some people who have dew and Jew as homophones. But like, d is definitely closer to being simple and well-behaved than s and t are.

It makes some sense to think of s, t, w, x, and y as fitting into the above.

• s — sad, pass

• t — tad, pat

• w — web

• x — pax

• y — yes

They will, however, need unusual care in many cases. (In particular, w and y often get mixed up with vowels.)

Simple digraphs

• ph — f sound, phone, graph

• sh — ship, bash

• zh — zhuzh

The only thing keeping th from being on this list is that there are two different th sounds—think of the words think and the. You can usually get away with ignoring this.

• hard th — the, bathe

• soft th — think, bath

Also note that a word like hothead, where the t and h come from different morphemes, should usually be thought of as containing a t followed by an h, rather than as containing the digraph th. This usually generalizes to other combinations of letters.

Complicated consonants

Hard and Soft C

The letter c has two common pronunciations:

• hard c — k sound like in cat, cot, cut, pack

• soft c — s sound like in cee, city, cyan

Generally, with rare exceptions including facade or sceptic, hard c occurs before a, o, u, or a consonant, and soft c occurs before e, i, or y. Indeed, these are often spelt façade or skeptic to avoid violating the hard vs soft c rules.

The rare middle c occurs in words like cello and ciao, mostly of Italian origin. It’s pronounced like soft ch.

There are also words like ocean, which should probably be seen as a weird variant of soft c that is analogous to the many weird s sounds that sometimes show up.

Hard and soft ch

When c occurs before h, it almost always forms a digraph.

• hard ch — technology, Christmas

• soft ch — chocolate, beach, church

The hard ch words tend to be Greek in origin, where ch transliterates the letter χ. They also might be Germanic in origin, like Bach or loch. Much like middle c, there is a middle ch that occurs in words like Chanukah. Middle ch is usually an h sound, which is why it’s sometimes just spelt as an h.

The -ed suffix

The -ed suffix is pronounced as a t when following voiceless sounds (p, ch, k, f, soft th, s, sh, or h), a d when following voiced sounds (anything else except t), or as -id when following specifically t or d.

Note that this is based on the preceding sound, not the preceding letter. Also note that if a word ends in e, the -ed suffix merges with the final e rather than producing a double e.

Hard and soft g

The letter g can also be divided into hard and soft forms:

• hard g — gang²² Note that -ng almost always assimilates into a single velar nasal, rather than actually forming a sequence of an n sound and a g sound. But finger for example is an exception., gone, gui, bags

• soft g — j sound, gee, gin

This has a lot more exceptions than the hard and soft c rules, including common words like get and give. But many apparent exceptions are actually regular. For example, ragged and ragging both have a single³³ Okay ragging has two if you count the ng but shut up. hard g sound. This is because the double g indicates that they are conjugations of to rag, which has a hard g. On the other hand, raged and raging both have a soft g, because they’re conjugations of to rage, which has an e after the g and therefore a soft g sound.

Middle g is sometimes used in words like genre, though some just use a soft g there. It makes a zh sound.

Multigraphs with g

• dg — badger, judgment

• dge — badge, judge

• gh — ghost, caught, fight, laugh

• gu — guess, guilt

The digraph dg usually makes a soft g sound. However, dge often makes sense to read as a single trigraph representing a soft g, rather than as a dg followed by an e. For example, consider badge and rage. You would expect badge to have the long a sound, like rage does, if badge ended in a silent e—but it does not, it ends in an audible dge. (We will explain “silent e” later.)

The gh dipraph usually signals a hard g⁴⁴ It is unclear why a hard g would need to be explicitly signaled in ghost. at the start of a word, but at the end of some syllables it’s silent (caught, fight, ought) and at the end of some others (laugh, cough, rough) it makes an f sound. In these cases, it was usually a historical middle ch, which then fell silent or turned into an f sound depending on context.

It is often better to think of gh at the end of a syllable as part of the vowel system, rather than part of the consonant system.

On the other hand, gu—particularly when followed by e or i—is often best thought of as a g followed by a silent u, where the silent u is separate from whatever other vowels might follow. If it isn’t followed by e or i, usually the g stands on its own, although there are exceptions like guard. Also the gu in penguin makes a gw sound—you can more reliably assume the u is silent when a word starts with gu.

Silent gn, kn, and so on

Words like

• chthonic

• czar

• gnat

• knight

• mnemonic

• phthsis

• pneumonia

• psyche

• pterodactyl

• tsunami

• write

• xylophone

which start with invalid consonant clusters often drop the first consonant.

Silent letters after m

Words like lamb, bomb, comb, or most other words that end in an -mb don’t pronounce the b⁵⁵ If you’re a coward.. This transfers to derived words like combing. Sometimes hymn is described similarly, but I’d rather analyze that as assimilation because hymnal does still pronounce the n.

The letter q

almost always appears in the digraph qu, which often makes the kw sound. Queen, exquisite. But sometimes the qu just makes a k sound: liquor, opaque, torque, risqué, queue. And sometimes it's kyu: que. Some of these make sense to analyze as a kw where the w gets eaten by a following back vowel or by the end of the word or something like that.

When q doesn’t come next to a u, it’s almost certainly in a loan word, and it might make a k sound (Qatar) or a ch sound (qi, arguably the most important weird Scrabble word). I guess there’s also, like, QWERTY, where it makes a k sound.

Salacious s

The letter s sure is unusually complicated. It rarely makes any sound other than the s, sh, z, or zh sounds. Two processes are the culprit:

Voicing

The -s plural, possessive, or third-person-singular-present-tense suffix is often voiced. The rule is very similar to the -ed suffix described above. After p, t, k, f, soft th, or h, -s is pronounced with a normal s: pats. After vowels or other consonants, it’s a z: pas, pads⁶⁶ Since the s and z sounds aren’t distinguished in this context, sometimes it ends up being a sound vaguely between the two moreso than either an s or a z. Or at least, I think that happens.

Also, like, sometimes the nasals aren’t really very voiced and so on.. After ch, s, sh, j (or soft g), z, zh, or x, it’s an iz: glasses, mixes. Usually when it’s iz, it’s written -es (though sometimes the word already ended in e).

A single s on its own at the end of a word usually follows similar rules: is, as. An ending of -ss usually indicates an s sound: glass. And -se can go either way: house (n) and loose, but house (v) and lose. Verbs are somewhat more likely to pronounce -se with a z.

Sometimes conjugation can change the pronunciation of an s: house, but houses. This is similar to the relationship between knife and knives, but without a letter changing to signal it.

It can sometimes even straight up depend on the context in a sentence: He has to ball, but He has a ball—in has to, the s assimilates to the voiceless t in to and is pronounced as an s, but in has a it’s between two vowels and pronounced as a z⁷⁷ Arguably only the modal has in has to can do the assimilation (cf He has gotta ball), whereas has a uses an entirely different transitive verb has that can’t assimilate or contract and just happens to be a homograph..

You need to be on the look out for words where an s is voiced between two vowels, like laser, present, music, closet, business, reason, visit, thousand. Advice has an s sound, but advise has a z sound. Close (adj) has an s, but close (v) has a z—and this is maintained by closer (adj) versus closer (n). But it’ll be an s sound in plenty of words too—it simply cannot be consistently predicted. It might more often be a z sound in words of Romance origin, but this isn’t consistent.

An s at the start of a word is almost always a simple s sound. A soft c is almost always voiceless.

Palatalization

An si or su (when the u is a high vowel) often undergoes a palatal assimilation into a sh. This happens in almost all words ending in -sion, -ssion, -cion, or -(c/x)ious.

• -sion: tension, pension, expansion, comprehension, expulsion

• -ssion: mission, confession

• -cion: suspicion

• -cious: conscious, atrocious, gracious

• -xious: (ksh sound) anxious, obnoxious

• su: sure, sugar, issue, pressure, assure, insure⁸⁸ The u plays double duty and indicates the vowel in some of these, unlike the -sion words where you could usually interpret the vowel as hanging entirely on the o.

• before e: ocean, nauseous

• before r: Sri Lanka⁹⁹ This is basically the only word which even has the opportunity to have this problem. Though some speakers do shchr for str.

This is uncommon in words like sin or suit where the syllable with the s is stressed.

Both

A lot of the ssi words are using as to signal that it’s a sh rather than a zh: pressure, but pleasure. Similarly, c is almost always sh and not zh.

• -ssion: fission (for Americans)¹⁰¹⁰ After looking at this word more I’m less mad at British people for saying it with a sh. Really the Americans are the ones being weird here.

• -sion: fusion, version, immersion, expulsion¹¹¹¹ This one can go either way for me tbh.
  
  …Okay actually maybe I might use sh specifically when it’s a disciplinary action, and zh otherwise. Do I actually do that? That would be really weird. It might be more like “it’s harder to get away with zh in other contexts”.

• -sure: measure, treasure, closure

• before e: nausea

So overall, there’s some hints. You can almost always come up with good guesses on the most likely pronunciations of an s, but it’s hard to be absolutely sure without already being familiar with the word.

Torrential t

The letter t has many of the same issues the letter s does. It can palatalize in a few different ways. Sometimes it becomes a ch before r or high vowels:

• -ture: nature, creature

• -tual: actual, virtual, spiritual

• -stion: question, suggestion

• -ntial: potential, essential

• tu: virtue, virtuous

• tr: train, street

• before e: righteous

Some of the one with tu are probably more like tyu for some speakers; some speakers will say words like Tuesday with a ch, too—this comes down to long u shenanigans.

Sometimes, t straight up becomes an sh:

• -tion: nation, action

• -tient: quotient, patient

• -tial: partial, spatial

The surrounding letters or sounds can help you guess whether a t will palatalize to ch or sh, but it isn’t perfectly consistent.

It can also sort of become a d sound between vowels sometimes: city, water. But it’s only sort of, cf pre-fortis clipping, cf Canadian raising, etc etc.

Hard and soft wh

• Hard wh — w sound, what, whet, which, whoa, whorl, whup

• Soft wh — h sound, who, whose, whore

You almost always see hard wh if the following vowel is anything except an o. If it is an o, it mostly depends on whether the o makes an oo sound—except in whore, which is complicated by the r.

This is why whoa, not woah. But woah is common enough nowadays to be arguably acceptable.

The letter x

Usually ks: ex. Sometimes palatalize a, as discussed earlier: anxious. Sometimes voices to gz: exit, exist, anxiety. At the start of a word, usually it voices to gz and then the g gets dropped¹²¹² Boring people remember this as “x becomes z at the start of words.”.

Double z

Pizza isn’t a z sound, but rather a ts sound. There are definitely some other rules I forgot. In the end, it’s rather unclear when it stops being “less common rules” and starts being “exceptions”, but probably I forgot some things that are closer to the “less common rules” end of the spectrum.

Vowels

This part will probably be wrong in parts for people who aren’t American.

Short and Long Vowels

Behold the “short vowels”:

• short a, /æ/ — mat

• short e, /ε/ — met

• short i, /ɪ/ — mit

• short o, /ɑ/ — mop

• short u, /ə/ — mutt

Behold the “long vowels”:

• long a, /ej/ — mate

• long e, /i/ — meet

• long i, /aj/ — mite, wide

• long o, /ow/ — mope

• long u, /ju/ — mute

But the /j/ in a long u often gets dropped or assimilated—usually you can tell whether a long u will have the /j/ just by looking at the preceding consonant. This list of sounds mostly suffices, except for the weird /ʊ/ in put and book. Also, a short a makes the /ɑ/ sound sometimes. Also r can complicate things but I’m not talking about r today, you can’t make me.

A short y will usually act like a short i: myth. A long y can be a long i (sky), but also a long e (happy).

Sometimes vowels take on pronunciations closer to their pronunciations in five vowel systems, especially in loan words or foreign-looking proper nouns.

Predicting whether a sole vowel is pronounced as its short or long form is complicated. By default you should probably assume short.

An e at the end of a word is usually a silent e, which usually-but-not-always indicates that some preceding vowel is long. Sometimes an e in the middle of a word can also be a silent e.

A vowel in an open syllable—a syllable that ends in a vowel—is usually long: me, bi, unit. The silent e rule originates from this rule: mate used to be ma•te, placing the a in an open syllable. The syllable closed when the e went silent, but the e still indicated a long vowel. Many cases of random long vowels in the middle of words can be analyzed as cases of this rule. Some short words like ma are exceptions.

Almost any short vowel will become a schwa on a regular basis in unstressed syllables, but it's not totally consistent.

When I was in school, they taught me that

Which means that a vowel digraph is pronounced as the long form of the first vowel. This is true sometimes.

And some of the exceptions are stuff like “ey”, which could be a short e followed by a consonant if you squint. But a lot of the exceptions really aren’t¹³¹³ Or at least, not unless you’re going to REALLY go ham and say that e and i and o and u are all consonants sometimes. Which, to be fair, is at least sorta defensible..

A digraphs

• aa: Very uncommon.

  • aardvark

• ae: People sometimes have an instinct to say this as a long a. But it’s often actually a short or long e. In some words the a has started being dropped (nowadays it’s usually spelt encyclopedia, not encyclopaedia.)

  • archaeology (long e)

  • algae has a soft g because ae is a high vowel if pronounced as a long e

  • aesthetic (short e)

  • formulae and other words where -a pluralizes to -ae usually have long a

• ai: Usually long a as expected.

  • rain, wait, praise, email, explain (long a)

  • again, said (short e)

  • aisle, samurai, haiku, Thai (long i)

  • certain, mountain (short i ~ schwa)

• ao: Uncommon.

  • dao (/aw/)

  • ka•on, cha•os (long a + short o)

  • pharaoh (long o)

• au or aw: Usually short o (or specifically the caught vowel if unmerged)

  • cause, taught, fault, author, gauze, August, awful, law (/ɔ/)

  • laugh (short a)

  • gauge (long a)

  • restaurant (silent)

  • sauerkraut, luau (/aw/)

  • Hawaii, kawaii (schwa followed by a syllable starting with w)

• ay: Usually long a as expected.

  • day, say, may, player, runway, mayonnaise (long a)

  • aye, kayak, papaya (long i)

  • say (short e)

E digraphs

• ea: Usually long e as expected, but mot uncommonly short e.

  • each, read, lead, weave, knead (long e)

  • bread, read, lead, death, heavy (short e)

  • break, steak, great (long a)

  • cre•ate, re•act, cere•al, Kore•a (long e + a)

  • ocean (schwa)

• ee: Pretty much exclusively long e.

  • bee, need, sheep, keel, fourteen

  • been (short i or schwa)

• ei: Long e, long i, long a, or sometimes short i ~ schwa

  • neither, seize, caffeine (long e)

  • neither, height, Einstein (long i)

  • surveillance, eight (long a)

  • foreign, forfeit (short i ~ schwa)

There’s a common rhyme:

I before E except after C
And when pronounced A as in neighbor or weigh
And on weekends and holidays and all throughout May
You’ll always be wrong no matter what you say!

A sufficiently astute reader will notice that most ei words are exceptions to this proposed rule. There might be anything at all to the C thing, and certainly ei makes a long a more often than ie does, but come on!

• eo: Remarkably inconsistent—if anything stands out, it’s “that's usually just an e and an o from separate syllables”

  • people, theory (long e)

  • jeopardy, leopard (short e)

  • gorgeous, righteous (soft g or t + ou)

  • pigeon (soft g + schwa)

  • luncheon (schwa)

  • yeoman (long o)

  • vide•o, the•oretical, e•on, the•ology, ge•ography (long e + o)

• eu: Usually long u.

  • feud, neutral, sleuth, deuce, leukemia (long u)

  • Europe, amateur (long u that got reduced before r?)

  • Freud (oy)

  • re•unite, muse•um, mausole•um

• ew: Almost always long u.

  • pew, new, view (long u)

  • sew (long o)

• ey: Long e or long a

  • key, money (long e)

  • they, hey (long a)

  • geyser (long i)

I digraphs

• ia: Long i, separate syllables, or schwa

  • diamond, bias (long i)

  • mani•a, pi•ano; tri•al, deni•al

  • partial, social (sha)

  • marriage, parliament (short i ~ schwa)

• ie: Usually long e, but usually long i at the end of a word or when replacing a y

  • believe, piece, thief, sieve (long e)

  • lie, tie, flies (long i)

  • friend (short e)

  • mischief, sieve (short i)

  • view (long u)

  • di•et, qui•et, vari•ety

• ii: Rare. Long i or separate syllables.

  • Mii, Wii (long i)

  • ski•ing, radi•i, Hawai•i, anti•inflammatory

• io: Usually separate syllables, a palatalized consonant + a schwa, or a y + a schwa

  • million (y + schwa)

  • radi•o, li•on, bi•ology, curi•ous

  • nation, action

• iu: Pretty much always separate syllables. Maybe you could argue schwa in aluminium, but most people who use a schwa probably drop the i.

• iw: Separate syllables. Kiwi, antiwar.

• iy: …semiyearly? DIY?

O digraphs

• oa: Almost always long o.

  • boat, whoa, oak, goal (long o)

  • broad (/ɔ/)

  • bo•a, o•asis

• oe: Usually long o.

  • toe, goes, aloe (long o)

  • shoe, canoe, manoeuvre (long u)

  • oestrogen, oesophagus (short e)

  • phoenix, subpoena, amoeba (long e)

  • does (schwa)

  • po•em¹⁴¹⁴ Although Gary Come Home rhymes poem with home, so., co•exist

• oi: Usually oy.

  • join, void (oy)

  • bourgeoisie, memoir, reservoir (wa)

• oo: Either long u or /ʊ/

  • food, mood, soon, boot (long u)

    • Compare moot and mute—long u always loses the y when spelt “oo” (or “ou”).

  • good, book, hoof (/ʊ/)

  • blood, flood (schwa)

• ou: Very inconsistent.

  • route, round, house, pouch, ouch (/aw/)

  • route, soup, you, wound, coupon¹⁵¹⁵ Okay I some people actually say a y in coupon. So maybe I lied about long u always dropping the y when spelt ou. (long u)

  • touch, double, country (schwa)

  • trough, ought, bought, wrought (/ɔ/)

  • tour, trough, soul, dough, though (long o)

  • tour, could, would, should (/ʊ/)

  • famous, curious, dangerous (schwa)

• ow: /aw/ or long o.

  • bow, cow, how, now, ow, powder, down, owl (/aw/)

  • bow, show, know, grow, window, bowl (long o)

• oy: Almost always the oy sound /oj/

  • boy, toy, enjoy, oyster, royal (oy)

  • buoy (long e)

  • coyote (long i)

There’s a general pattern where digraphs ending in I from the middle of a word sort of correspond to digraphs ending in Y from the end of a word.

U digraphs

• ua: Usually, the u is forming a gu- or qu- digraph, is pronounced as a w, or they’re split into separate syllables.

  • dual (maybe?) (long u)

  • guard, equal

  • jaguar, suave, persuade (wa)

  • casu•al, Janu•ary, manu•al, gradu•ate, du•al (maybe?)

• ue: Long u, separate syllables, or gu- / qu-

  • blue, glue, value, due, rue, cue, duel (maybe?) queue (long u)

  • tongue, fatigue, vague, unique

  • flu•ent, du•el (maybe?)

  • Buenos Aires (w + short e)

• ui: Long u, short i, gu- / qu-, or separate syllables

  • fruit, juice, nuisance, bruise (long u)

  • build, biscuit (short i)

  • condu•it, ru•in, intu•ition

  • quick, guide, guile, quite

• uo: Usually gu- or qu-, separate syllables, or followed by r

  • quote, quotient

  • du•o, continu•ous

  • fluoride

• uu: Long u or separate syllables

  • vacuum (long u with y)

  • muumuu (long u without y)

  • continu•um

• uw: These are all fake made up words that don’t exist—uh, there’s Ku•wait.

• uy: Almost always long i

  • guy, buy (long i)

If I didn’t screw up, you should be able to get through most¹⁶¹⁶ MOST. You expect me to be exhaustive? Hahahahaha. of The Chaos using this list of spellings and have the correct pronunciation be one of the ones on your list, even if you can’t uniquely identify it. But I refuse to give a full accounting of vowels followed by r or of trigraphs and beyond.

I hope that this has clarified matters enough that you can show this to children. I will probably point at this post in the future instead of ever explaining anything weird about English spelling again. Maybe I will even update the post if there’s something I need to explain that didn’t get covered in it.