G

G becomes /j/ before i, e, or y, e.g. logic, page, gender, gist, gym.

Sometimes  ‘u’ occurs in between ‘i’ or  ‘e’ like guest and guide.

However, there are exceptions to this, like get, girl, begin, together.

Again, one of the Gs is silent when they occur together or with a  group of sounds, like suggest, eight, tough, laugh.

 Otherwise, G is pronounced clearly like goal, garden, gather, gulp, golf, sag, wig, rug.

Example of variations of G –

My granddaughter is a gymnast. She being a frail girl, I thought that gymnastics is not the sport for her. There was no logic in my thinking though, as she has become a great gymnast with awards and all.  She has proved me wrong.

H

H is a consonant which is very often silent, especially in the beginning of a word. 

The H is silent at the beginning of these words: hour, honest, and honor, as well as in other places in words like wish, sigh, eight, weight, which, why.

H is also spoken in words like half, help, hard, hear, hope, high.  

Finally, H is spoken in exclamations like Eh!, oh!, and Aah!

Example of H in all its variations –

Yesterday I was eighty, and I climbed a high steep hill without any help. This morning I get a phone call saying that they are going to honor me as an example to youth and children. Honestly, I felt honored at such a gesture by the club.

I

I is a vowel and like other vowels, the letter I has many representations.

 It is /i/ in sit,  sip, listen, list, lift.

It is /i:/ in receive, believe.

It is /ay/ in elite, flight, light, vile.

Finally, it is /ǝ/ in girl, girth, mirth, smirk.

Example of I –

I’m a little girl and I would like to fly a kite, but my kite won’t go up. I believe it is the air that pushes it down. My sisters, who are experts at it, say on the contrary, it is the air that carries the kite high in the sky.

J

J is a consonant and has the following forms: 

Palatal (voiced affricate); Palatal (voiced continuant); Voiced (pharyngeal fricative)

The different variations are listed below:

‘J’ read as /h/ in jalapeño, fajita, San Jose.

‘J’ read as /y/ in Jugoslavia, Jadranka. These are usually words coming from Eastern Europe. 

‘J’ read as /j/ in jam, just, July, major.

J in its various forms in a sentence –

Major John likes different jams, but he likes hot jalapeño recipes too.

K

K is a consonant and is sometimes silent at the beginning of words, such as knee, knot, know, and acknowledge. 

It is difficult to say whether it is C that is silent or K in words like back, sick, lock. 

Example of K –

The knob of the kettle is black.

L

L is a letter with many peculiarities.

Dark L is always spoken before ‘e’, where ‘e’ is silent and behaves like a vowel, which is why it is called a vocoid. Examples of this are: cattle, castle, pestle, temple, shuttle.

The other peculiarity of L is that it is very often silent, like in the words calf, walk, half, palm, psalm, almond, salmon. It is also silent in words like should, could, and would but is pronounced in words like shoulder or mould.

One of them is silent when two Ls occur together, like bullet, collect, doll, millet, full.

L  is pronounced in words like last, leaf, long, lost, melon, culmination, color, male, meal, steel.    

Variations of L in a sentence –

The light in the temple was coming from an oil lamp, where the oil was collected in a almond shaped mould, cut in half to hold the oil.