The Alphabet

TheAlphabet

The English alphabet consists of 26 letters.

Each letter has an uppercase and a lowercase form. (Capital letters VS small letters)

5 of the letters in the English alphabet are vowels:A, E, I, O, U.

The remaining 21 letters are consonants: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M , N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z.

Until 1835 there was a 27th letter (right after Z). It was called ampersand and it was this one:

&

The English alphabet is based on the Latin script which is the basic set of letters commons to the various alphabets originating from the classical Latin alphabet.

The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters. It originated around the 7th century from Latin script.

The name ALPHABET comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta.

In B.E. we say ZED /ˈzɛd/,in A.E. we say ZEE /ˈziː/

There are 44 sounds in English:24 consonants sounds + + 20 vowel sounds.

The letters don't always represent the same sounds.

Vowel = A sound we make when the breath flows outthrough the mouth freely, without being blocked.

The letters A, E, I, O, Uare called vowels because they represent this kind of sound.

There are 20 vowels sounds in English, divided into 3 types of vowel sounds:LONG VOWEL SOUNDS - 5 sounds SHORT VOWEL SOUNDS - 7 sounds DIPHTONGS - 8 sounds

Consonant = A sound we make that isn't a vowel. The breath is somehow blocked on its way out of the mouth.

There are 24 consonant sounds in English, divided into 2 types of consonant sounds:VOICED SOUNDS - 15 sounds UNVOICED SOUNDS- 9 sounds

Every voiceless sounds has a similar voiced sound.

Click here to listen to & to practice the consonant sounds!!!

The letter Y sometimes represents a consonant (as in "young") and sometimes a vowel (as in "myth"). Very rarely, W may represent a vowel (as in "cwm", a Welsh loanword). The consonant sounds represented by the letters W and Y in English (/w/ and /j/ as in yes /jɛs/ and went /wɛnt/) are referred to as semi-vowels by linguists, however this is a description that applies to the sounds represented by the letters and not to the letters themselves.

A digraph is two letters that combine together to correspond to one sound (phoneme). Examples of consonant digraphs are 'ch, sh, th, ng'. Examples of vowel digraphs are 'ea, oa, oe, ie, ue, ar, er, ir, or, ur '.

Blends, on the other hand, are two or more consonants that BLEND together but each sound can still be heard.

Blend words are usually created in one of two ways:1) by adding the first part of the first word to the second part of the second word, e.g. smoke + fog = smog 2) by combining the beginnings of two words, e.g. cybernetic + organism = cyborg

When we write, we use the writing (spelling) alphabet (= 26 letters). When we speak, we use the speaking (phonetic) alphabet (= 44 sounds).

Even if you don’t know all the English Consonant IPA symbols, still use the IPA for important information such as: – when you see the two dots /:/ it means the sound is long – each symbol represents a sound – when you see this dash /’/ it means the next syllable is stressed

Do you know what NATO phonetic alphabet is?

Using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet each letter of the English alphabet and numbers, too, have distinct names that would be most easily understood by those who exchange voice messages, regardless of language/ pronunciation differences or the quality of the communication channel.

The alphabet is used to spell parts of a message containing letters and numbers to avoid confusion, because many letters sound similar, such as “n” and “m” or “f” and “s”.

Thank you!

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