Spelling would be so much easier if we either pronounced the ‘k’ in words like ‘knife’, ‘knob’, ‘knit’ and ‘know’ or if the ‘k’ was just omitted. So, why do we have an unpronounced ‘k’ in these words? A little … Continued
Schwa is the unclearly pronounced vowel sound that occurs in multisyllabic words. It is the most common sound in English and can be represented by every vowel grapheme. Schwa is a spelling issue not a reading issue. If students can … Continued
The ‘wh’ letter combination can be pronounced /w/ with the ‘h’ not pronounced (e.g., white). It can be pronounced /h/ with the ‘w’ not pronounced (e.g., who) and in some dialects of English it is pronounced /hw/. The placement of … Continued
The suffixes ‘-ant’ and ‘-ent’ are added to words to form a noun to indicate a ‘person who’ or ‘thing that’ (e.g., an ‘assistant’ is a person who assists, a ‘president’ is a person who presides). They are also added … Continued
Today, ‘gh’ is pronounced as /f/ as in ‘laugh’, /g/ as in ‘ghost’ or is not pronounced at all as in ‘daughter’ or ‘night’. It is interesting to look at the history surrounding this combination of letters as in fact … Continued