Relationship between Sound and Spelling

Relationship between Sound and Spelling

It is a well known fact that English spelling does not always indicate how an
English word should be pronounced. There is, in other words, no one-to-one
correspondence between the letters of the Roman alphabet and the sounds of
English. While English has 44 sounds, the alphabet has only 26 letters. So the
alphabet is overburdened. And worse still, even in the face of a scarcity of
letters, many of them are sometimes squandered in representing the same
sound. These two factors together result in a good deal of confusion, as is
illustrated below:

1 Listen to the following words in which the same letter stands for many
different sounds. Repeat each word:
ch                 machine, monarch, chief
a                   late, last, fat, woman, village, water , what
ough             though, through, bough, thought, thorough, cough

2 Now listen to some words in which the same sound is represented by
different letters or combinations of letters.

i The n sound is represented by the letter or letters
n           as in neck
nn         as in funny
gn         as in sign
kn         as in know
pn         as in pneumonia

ii The vowel sound in the word get, is represented by the letter or
letters:
ea            as in head
ei             as in leisure
eo            as in leopard
a              as in many
ai             as in said
ie             as in friend
u             as in bury
ue           as in guess

iii The vowel sound in the word tea is represented by the letter or
letters:
ea        as in beat
ie         as in brief
eo        as in people
e          as in scene
ee        as in seen
ey         as in key
i           as in machine
oe         as in foetus
ei          as in receive
uay       as in quay