Vowels and Consonants

Concepts of a Vowel

All vowels are voiced and will make your voice box vibrate. You can feel it vibrate by cupping your hand over your throat when saying certain sounds. When we say each vowel sound, the air flow is unobstructed.

As long as you have a breath, you can make a short vowel sound. Sometimes with the short-i and short-e, a person saying these sounds will need to put their teeth closer together in order to hear and see the difference.

There are three types of individual vowel sounds: short, long, and schwa.

60% of English words use a short vowel or schwa sound.

A short vowel sound is one of the hardest vowel sounds for a student to grasp, especially a student with dyslexia.

As shown in the picture below, a short vowel's diacritical mark is called a breve. Marking syllables is not something that everyone is taught, so this concept is important for you to understand as a parent or educator when working with a child in identifying syllables and knowing the vowel sounds.

A long vowel sound will say its name. Please be aware that the long-u will make two different sounds. Especially after a R or L, it will say an /oo/ sound like in flu.  As shown in the picture below, the long vowel will have a line on top, which is called a macron.

Schwa is a very misunderstood concept for many students and, to be honest, some educators. It is crucial for a student to understand schwa so they can read and spell words correctly. Essentially, any vowel when following certain rules can switch to the schwa sound /uh/. When looking in the dictionary, you will see several upside-down e's. This is the symbol that represents schwa.

Here are a few examples of when a vowel will switch to schwa. First, the syllable has to always be unaccented (it does not last the longest or is not stressed).

When there is a closed A or O that is unaccented (blos-som)

Vowel-L at the end of a word that is unaccented (pen-cil)

Open-A that is unaccented (a-go, Chi-na)

Concepts of a Consonant

Consonants are made when the air flow is obstructed. It can be obstructed by the lips, teeth, or tongue.

There are 21 consonants in the English language.

Sometimes these consonants form digraphs (th, sh, wh, tch, dge), blends (sp, str, spl), and digraph blends (nch, nth, shr).

It's important to note that digraphs are two or three letters that make one sound.

Blends will still say the individual sound of each letter. Blends are not truly considered special sounds.

Consonants are either voiced or unvoiced, which is the same as quiet and vibrating. Feel your voice box in order to figure out what the consonant is doing.

Most consonants have one primary sound, and they rarely say their name (like in x-ray).

Y is one of the most commonly misunderstood consonants/vowels. Yes, that's right, it can be both! Y is only a consonant when it is at the beginning of a word (yellow, yes, Yankee). However, it is a vowel when it is at the end of a word or in the middle of a word.

Fun fact: When Y is in the middle of a word or syllable by itself, it is a Greek word and will say either a long-i or short-i sound (hyphen, syllable, cycle).

The letter Q is also misunderstood and should always be followed by a U for the word to be spelled correctly. Ever notice that Q is by itself on the alphabet strip (let's add QU instead to avoid any confusion).

Two foundational pieces that everyone must have before learning to read and write are the ability to discriminate sounds (auditory discrimination) and strong phonemic awareness skills (there are multiple skills to develop).  If you would like to learn more about a program that significantly improves auditory discrimination and auditory memory, please email me.