"24 letters of the Latin alphabet first (including ampersand), then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note ""ond"" (⁊), an insular symbol for ""and"": In the orthography of Modern English, thorn (þ), eth (ð), wynn (ƿ), yogh (), ash (æ), and ethel (œ) are obsolete. Latin borrowings reintroduced homographs of ash and ethel into Middle English and Early Modern English, though they are largely obsolete (see ""Ligatures in recent usage"" below), and where they are used they are not considered to be separate letters (e.g. for collation purposes), but rather ligatures. Thorn and eth were both replaced by"
"based on the following principles: 1. Each letter represents only one spoken sound 2. There is a letter for each basic sound in the English language 3. Double letters (two adjacent identical letters) represent long vowels and strong consonants. There are 24 letters: 17 consonants and 7 vowels. Most of the letters are from the current English Alphabet: A B D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Z. Two letters are new: Ä Ö. There are 4 letters in the English Alphabet that are no longer needed: C"
"for ""analyse"", ""catalog"" for ""catalogue"" and so forth. These spellings already existed as alternatives, but Webster's dictionaries helped make them standard in the US. See American and British English spelling differences for details. Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other idiosyncrasies in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains, depending on dialect, 24–27 separate consonant phonemes and 13–20 vowels. However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, so there is not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple"
"English alphabet The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an uppercase and a lowercase form, and the same letters constitute the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface (and font), and the shape of handwritten letters can differ significantly from the standard printed form (and between individuals), especially when written in cursive style. English is the only major modern European language requiring no diacritics for native words (although a diaeresis is used by some publishers in words such as ""coöperation"" or ""naïve""). Written English does,"
"sometimes represent a consonant (e.g., ""quiz"" and ""onion"" respectively). W and Y are sometimes referred as semivowels by linguists. Alternative scripts have been proposed for written English – mostly extending or replacing the basic English alphabet – such as the Deseret alphabet, the Shavian alphabet, Gregg shorthand, etc. English alphabet The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an uppercase and a lowercase form, and the same letters constitute the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface (and font), and the shape of handwritten letters can"
"of phonemes in different languages) says that ""the English language uses a rather large set of 13 to 21 vowel phonemes"". Although these figures are often quoted as a scientific fact, they actually reflect just one of many possible analyses, and later in the English Phonology article an alternative analysis is suggested in which some diphthongs and long vowels may be interpreted as comprising a short vowel linked to either or . The transcription system for British English (RP) devised by the phonetician Geoff Lindsey and used in the CUBE pronunciation dictionary also treats diphthongs as composed of a vowel"
"letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant sound. The 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y. The letter Y stands for the consonant in ""yoke"", the vowel in ""myth"", the vowel in ""funny"", and the diphthong in ""my"". W always represents a consonant except in combination with a vowel letter, as in ""growth"", ""raw"", and ""how"", and in a few loanwords from Welsh, like ""crwth"" or ""cwm"". In some other languages, such as Finnish,"
"are made up of nine diphthongs, and five vowels and fourteen consonants that make up the alphabet. 'a' is usually pronounced as in ""flat"" a sometimes pronounced as in ""fast"" 'e' is always pronounced as in ""ten"" 'i' is always pronounced as in ""tin"" 'o' is always pronounced as in ""not"" 'u' is always pronounced as in ""put"" 'ai' is pronounced ""aye"" - e.g. ""Galeai"". sometimes the letters are pronounced separately 'ei' has no equivalent sound in English. 'oi' is pronounced ""oy"" - e.g. ""ba-oi"" (shark). sometimes the letters are pronounced separately. - e.g. ""o-i-sa"" (echo). 'ui' used as a"
"of this language within the 26 letters of the English alphabet is impossible. Most spelling reform proposals therefore include multi-letter graphemes, as does current English spelling (for example the first two phonemes of ""sheep"" are represented by the digraphs , , and , , respectively.) Diacritic marks have also formed part of spelling reform proposals. Critics have claimed that a consistent phonemically based system would be impractical: for example, phoneme distribution differs between British English and American English; furthermore, while English Received Pronunciation features about 20 vowels, some second language varieties of English have 10 or even fewer. A phonemic"
"older spellings, which are no longer phonetic, have been retained. On the other hand, many words were refashioned to reflect their Latin or Greek etymology. For example, for ""debt"" early Middle English wrote ""det/dette"", with the ""b"" being standardized in spelling in the 16th century, after its Latin etymon ""debitum""; similarly for ""quer/quere"", which was respelled as ""choir"" in the 17th century, modelled on Greek χορός ""chorus""; in both cases, the pronunciation was not changed. Modern English has anywhere from 14 to 22 vowel and diphthong phonemes, depending on dialect, and 26 or 27 consonant phonemes. A simple phoneme-letter representation"
"""i"", were introduced in the 16th century, and ""w"" assumed the status of an independent letter. The variant lowercase form long s (ſ) lasted into early modern English, and was used in non-final position up to the early 19th century. Today, the English alphabet is now considered to consist of the following 26 letters: Written English has a number of digraphs, but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet: Outside of professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use ligatures in loanwords, ligatures are seldom used in modern English. The ligatures ""æ"" and ""œ"" were until the 19th"
"English Braille English Braille, also known as ""Grade 2 Braille"", is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of 250 or so letters (phonograms), numerals, punctuation, formatting marks, contractions, and abbreviations (logograms). Some English Braille letters, such as , correspond to more than one letter in print. There are three levels of complexity in English Braille. Grade 1 is a nearly one-to-one transcription of printed English and is restricted to basic literacy. Grade 2, which is nearly universal beyond basic literacy materials, abandons one-to-one transcription in many places (such as the letter ) and adds hundreds of abbreviations and"
"however, have a number of digraphs. The alphabet's current form originated from Latin script about the 7th century. Since then, various letters have been added, or removed, to give the current Modern English alphabet of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form: The alphabet was derived from an original series of sixteen characters, that emerged as a way to record spoken words. The English language itself was first written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, in use from the 5th century. This alphabet was brought to what is now England, along with the proto-form of the language itself,"
"different meanings and often different spellings as well). Pollack Pickeraz (1963) asserted that there are 45 phonemes in the English language, and that the 26 letters of the English alphabet can represent them in about 350 ways. The irregularity of English spelling is largely an artifact of how the language developed. English is a West Germanic language with substantial influences and additional vocabulary from Latin, Greek, and French, among others. Imported words usually follow the spelling patterns of their language of origin. Advanced English phonics instruction includes studying words according to their origin, and how to determine the correct spelling"
"English mostly as calques, while others, such as Japanese, readily take in English loanwords written in sound-indicating script. Dubbed films and television programmes are an especially fruitful source of English influence on languages in Europe. Since the ninth century, English has been written in a Latin alphabet (also called Roman alphabet). Earlier Old English texts in Anglo-Saxon runes are only short inscriptions. The great majority of literary works in Old English that survive to today are written in the Roman alphabet. The modern English alphabet contains 26 letters of the Latin script: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h,"
"some of these may not be true for specific dialects: Up until the American–British split (1600–1725), some major phonological changes in English included: After the American-British split, further changes to English phonology included: Changes in alphabet and spelling were heavily influenced by the advent of printing and continental printing practices. Consequently, Modern English came to use a purely Latin alphabet of 26 letters. Modern English Modern English (sometimes New English or NE as opposed to Middle English and Old English) is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, which began in the late"
"cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. To write English using a syllabary, every possible syllable in English would have to have a separate symbol, and whereas the number of possible syllables in Japanese is around 100, in English there are approximately 15,000 to 16,000. However, syllabaries with much larger inventories do exist. The Yi script, for example, contains 756 different symbols (or 1,164, if symbols with a particular tone diacritic are counted as separate syllables, as in Unicode). The Chinese script, when used to write Middle Chinese and the modern varieties of Chinese, also represents syllables, and includes"
"French-language version of the song is also taught in Canada, with generally no alterations to the melody except in the final line that requires adjustment to accommodate the two-syllable pronunciation of the French ""y"". Because the English language has 40 sounds and only 26 letters, children and beginning readers also need to learn the different sounds (phonemes) associated with each letter. Many songs have been written to teach phonemic awareness and they are usually referred to as alphabet songs. There are also songs that go through the alphabet, making some of the letters stand for something in the process. An"
"to dialect, and also depend on the interpretation of the individual researcher. The number of consonant phonemes is generally put at 24 (or slightly more). The number of vowels is subject to greater variation; in the system presented on this page there are 20 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American and 20–21 in Australian English . The pronunciation keys used in dictionaries generally contain a slightly greater number of symbols than this, to take account of certain sounds used in foreign words and certain noticeable distinctions that may not be—strictly speaking—phonemic. The following table shows the 24"
"of English. Robinson distinguishes ten vowels in English, which he clearly considers to be distinct in quality as well as length. The long vowels are implied to be midway in quality between the neighbouring short vowels. In his alphabet, however, he treats them as pairs, with the long vowels being in shape inverted forms of the short vowels. Although interpretation of his symbolism is necessary, very approximately his vowels can be assigned as follows: Representative words are: The vowel assignments must be taken as extremely approximate, better reflecting the relationships between the vowels than their precise sound. Robinson's diphthongs are:"
"in English, they are more difficult to transliterate into other languages. Sometimes they are just transcribed by the actual English letter, and other times by its actual pronunciation (which also varies). For the most accurate transliteration, below is a table describing the different vowel sounds and their corresponding letters. Hebrew has only 5 vowel sounds, with lack of discrimination in Hebrew between long and short vowels. In comparison, English which has around 12 vowel sounds (5 long, 7 short) depending on dialect. As a result, words such as sit/seat ( and ), hat/hut ( and ), and cop/cope ( and"
"three , and in Canadian English, they merge to two . In addition, the words that have each vowel vary by dialect. The table ""Dialects and open vowels"" shows this variation with lexical sets in which these sounds occur. As is typical of an Indo-European language, English follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Unlike other Indo-European languages though, English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system in favor of analytic constructions. Only the personal pronouns retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class. English distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, determiners (including articles), prepositions, and"
"English. In contrast, in some Slavic languages /l/ and /r/ are used alongside vowels as syllable nuclei. Syllables have the following internal segmental structure: Both onset and coda may be empty, forming a vowel-only syllable, or alternatively, the nucleus can be occupied by a syllabic consonant. Phonotactics is known to affect second language vocabulary acquisition. The English syllable (and word) ""twelfths"" is divided into the onset , the nucleus and the coda ; thus, it can be described as CCVCCCC (C = consonant, V = vowel). On this basis it is possible to form rules for which representations of phoneme"
"of the ways English orthography is able to use the Latin alphabet's five vowel characters to represent so many vowel sounds. There is usually only one consonant between the silent and the preceding vowel; a double consonant may be a cue that the is not silent and does not affect the preceding vowel (as in ""Jesse"" and ""posse""). Traditionally, the vowels are said to be the ""long"" counterparts of the vowels , respectively, which are said to be ""short"". This terminology reflects the historical pronunciation and development of those vowels, but as a phonetic description of their current values it"
"way of reducing them to a set of phonemes, and these different systems or solutions are not simply correct or incorrect, but may be regarded only as being good or bad for various purposes"". The linguist F.W. Householder referred to this argument within linguistics as ""God's Truth vs. hocus-pocus"". Different analyses of the English vowel system may be used to illustrate this. The article English Phonology states that ""English has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes"" and that ""there are 20 vowel phonemes in Received Pronunciation, 14–16 in General American and 20–21 in Australian English""; the present article (Phoneme#Numbers"
"SVO or SOV, but deviation from strict word order does not alter the meaning due to the synthetic structure. Verbs are quite complex, and can be broken into four classes of verbs: animate-intransitive (AI), inanimate-intransitive (II), animate-transitive (AT), and inanimate-transitive (IT). Verbs are also prefixed and suffixed with various inflections, particles, and conjugations, so complex things can easily be described just by a verb. The original alphabet devised by Eliot and used by the Indians of the mid-seventeenth till nineteenth centuries consisted of all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet as used in English, with the addition of the digraph"
"is used in contrast with Latin ""a"" (such as in the International Phonetic Alphabet). In modern English orthography, the letter represents at least seven different vowel sounds: The double sequence does not occur in native English words, but is found in some words derived from foreign languages such as ""Aaron"" and ""aardvark"". However, occurs in many common digraphs, all with their own sound or sounds, particularly , , , , and . In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, denotes an open unrounded vowel, such as , , or . An exception is Saanich, in which (and the glyph"
"to spell it correctly, and its meaning will be indicated by the similarity to words of the same meaning and family. English uses a 26 letter Latin alphabet, but the number of graphemes is expanded by several digraphs, trigraphs, and tetragraphs, while the letter ""q"" is not used as a grapheme by itself, only in the digraph ""qu"". Each grapheme may represent a limited number of phonemes depending on etymology and location in the word. Likewise each phoneme may be represented by a limited number of graphemes. Some letters are not part of any grapheme, but function as etymological markers."
"new words (such as ""bike"") in which there is no historical reason for the presence of the other than the need to mark the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. An when associated with a preceding vowel usually converts the preceding “short vowel” to its ""long vowel"" equivalent and is silent. In English, the ""letter name"" of a vowel is its long vowel form (except in the case of , which has the same pronunciation as – compare ""byte/bite""). Depending on dialect, English has anywhere from 13 to more than 20 separate vowel phonemes, both monophthongs and diphthongs. Silent is one"
"Alphabet, represents the close-mid back rounded vowel. O O (named ""o"" , plural ""oes"") is the 15th letter and the fourth vowel in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was ""ʿeyn"", meaning ""eye"", and indeed its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye (possibly inspired by the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, cf. Proto-Sinaitic script). Its original sound value was that of a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the cognate Arabic letter ع ""ʿayn"". The"
"pronunciation of ""pearl"" in some variants of Scottish English can sound like the entirely unrelated word ""petal"" to an American ear. For a summary of the differences between accents, see International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects. English dialects differ greatly in their pronunciation of open vowels. In Received Pronunciation, there are four open back vowels, , but in General American there are only three, , and in most dialects of Canadian English only two, . In addition, which words have which vowel varies between dialects. Words like ""bath"" and ""cloth"" have the vowels in Received Pronunciation, but in General"
"long vowels, including seven pairs of pure vowels (monophthongs), , and two pairs of height-harmonic diphthongs, and . Two additional pairs of diphthongs, and , existed in earlier Old English but had been reduced to and , respectively, by late Old English times. In the transition to Middle English, this system underwent major changes, eliminating the diphthongs and leaving only one pair of low vowels, but with a vowel distinction appearing in the long mid vowels: This left an asymmetric system consisting of five short vowels and six long vowels , with additional front-rounded vowels in the southwest area. Some"
"Q: lacquer R: forecastle, dossier S: island T: listen U: tongue V: Milngavie (Scottish town), fivepence W: answer X: faux Y: beyond, key Z: rendezvous Silent English alphabet A silent English alphabet is a list of English words, each containing a silent letter from A to Z. The term was coined by the linguist John Higgins who produced an early version of such a list in 1983. There are many reasons why English spelling has such a high usage of silent letters. English has been borrowing words when needed from more than 350 other languages. Some of those words had"