The 44 Sounds of English

English can be thought of as an alphabetic language consisting of 44 speech sounds (phonemes) which map onto letter
patterns (graphemes). Graphemes can be a single letter (graph), or a combination of two (digraph), three (trigraph), or four
letters (quadgraph).
Note that the 44 sounds have multiple spellings (graphemes) and only the most common ones have been provided in this summary.

20 VOWELS
6 Short Vowels
a e i o u oo u
cat leg sit top rub book put

6 Long Vowels
ai ay ee ea ie igh oe ow oo ue
paid tray bee beat pie high toe flow moon cue

3 R-Controlled Vowels
ar er ir ur or
car her bird hurt cork

6 Other Vowels
ow ou oy oi eer ear air ere our
cow out boy void deer near hair there tour

1 Unstressed Vowel
SCHWA
trumpet across suppose
 24 CONSONANTS
PLACE Post-
Bilabial Labio-dental Inter-dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Where in the mouth alveolar
MANNER How the sound is
with both with lips and between front of front of top of back of voice
made
lips teeth teeth mouth mouth mouth mouth box
Stops p b t d k c g
air stopped pet bet tip dip cap gap

Nasal m n ng
through nose met net sing

ge
Fricative f v th th s z sh h
zh
high pressure air fan van thin this sue zoo ship beige hat

Affricates ch j
stop + fricative chain Jane

Approximants w r y
partial closure of
wet rat yak
airstream

Lateral l
air around side of
leg
tongue

ADDITIONAL CONSONANT SOUNDS

k + s = x
box

k + w = qu
quit