ENGLISH ALPHABET

V - Z

Alfabeto Inglés V-Z

Level: beginners, all levels

In these articles I want to pass on an example of a sound, and for this I use well-known place names. If you follow sports you can hear the sounds of these places on your radio or television during reports of football (soccer) or baseball matches.

The sounds of two vowels together are dealt with in the paper

Sounds of Two Vowels.

Vv [vi] has only one sound: of Everton or Vietnam

very, never, reveal, reverse, violate, vain, vacation, value, vanilla, varied, available [aveilabel], vehicle - and hundreds more.

Ww [dabel-yu] of Washingon or West Ham

wine, west, water, went, was, wish, will, weak, wings, wooden, wig, wild, wash,

You will have to be careful because sometimes ‘w’ is silent –

For example, at the beginning of a word –

wrist, write, wrote, wrapper, wreck, wrestle.

or IN a word –

the most common example is probably ‘answer’, which is pronounced  ‘anser’, also sword –pronounced sord.

or at the end of a word –

chew, threw, new, slow, mow.

COMBINATION wh : of White Sox, Whitehall

The letter ‘w’ joins with ‘h’ to make a very common pronunciation,

as in –

what, when, where, why, who, wheel, wheat, while, whisky.

Xx [eks] of X-ray, Alexander

This is a very rare letter and hardly any everyday words in English start with it.

It has two sounds in English –

1.  If it is the first letter in a word, the sound is usually ‘z’ of –

xenophobia, xylophone, Xerox.

The other 40+ words in the English dictionary are either medical or scientific and are hardly in general use.

The best-known word starting with ‘x’ is, of course, X-Ray, but because the letter is pronounced it has the sound as at 2 below.

2.   Where the ‘x’ comes in any other position in an English word it is pronounced ‘eks’. This is a strong sound that puts more stress on the ‘k’:

excellent, exact, expert, example, export, extravagant

Yy [wai] has four sounds –

1. why of White Sox is a very common example. Thus –

sky, shy, hype, type,

and verbs ending in –y: to try, to fly, to rely, to comply, to satisfy, to verify, to amplify

2.   ‘y’ of Yankee, Yemen, Yokohama . Examples are –

yes, yesterday, rayon, carrying, yolk, yard, youth, yellow

3.   at the end of words, the sound can be or ‘ei’

This sound appears very often in adverbs (words describing an action)

This is unfortunate, because at the ends of words it causes confusion with the sounds of the verbs at 1. above.

There are many examples of this ‘ei’ sound –

quickly, quietly, speedy, consciously, hardly, nicely, happily

4. This sound is the basic ‘i’ of English. Please see The Vowels.

hymn, rhythm, myth, physical, physics

Zz [zi] (USA) [zed](Brit.)

has only one sound – of Zambia or New Zealand –

zip, zest, razor, zinc, zodiac, zoo, zoom, maze, daze.

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