‘Reading maketh a full man and Writing a perfect man ‘
Francis Beacon

Reading indeed is like a  ‘Kalpavriksha’ that fulfills all our wishes. Once this art is mastered, it can provide us with all the knowledge in the world. All we need are books and the ability to read and understand them. Reading helps us to build our world view and enrich our inner self. Consequently, this helps us grow as an individual,  full of confidence and with sensibility and sensitivity.
But reading is not easy, especially the English language, because we read as we speak and not as we write. We write ‘know’ and read it as ‘no’ and read ‘c’ as ‘s’ in ‘city’ and ‘central’ but as ‘k’ in ‘cat’ and ‘cool’. Similarly ‘ea’ in ‘eat’ is with a long ‘i:’, ‘iǝ’ in ‘ear’, just ‘ǝ’ in ‘earth’, ‘a:’ in ‘heart’, and ‘e’ in ,’health’. The writing system is called graphology and its basic unit is grapheme or letter. The English language has 44 phonemes (significant sounds) and 26 letters. Mapping these 44 phonemes onto 26 letters is based on the way the words are spoken, giving rise to reading. Writing becomes more intimidating because the spellings do not match the spoken word. There is this big gap between the spoken and written word that makes learning to read a difficult task.
The mystery of this gap lies in the history of the English language. English is basically made up of six different languages. The original people of this land were Celts and spoke Celtic. Around 600 AD, some tribes from Northern Germany and Denmark migrated to England. These tribes were the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons. The Norman conqueror in 1066 brought Greek and Latin words, and while leaving the country, added many more to the English language. Around 1500, printing technology was invented and many publishing houses were set up. Lots of books were published. Language was standardized, and Grammars and Dictionaries were written. Words were heavily borrowed from French and German. Colonial rule over a quarter of the world led to the influence of languages spoken in these colonies.
English has always been a developing language. It borrowed words from all over the world, and while doing so, tried to retain the same pronunciation and their spellings, especially those of Latin and Greek, while some words that were borrowed got adapted to English phonology. Script was first prescribed in 1500 and was reformed sometime in the early 19th century, where both the spelling and pronunciation were designed as they were at that time. Since then words have been borrowed from all over the world with their original pronunciation and spelling, making the task of reading and learning spellings correctly a daunting one. Let me list some of the important peculiarities of the English language –
There are 26 letters but 44 sounds (phonemes: 24 consonants, 12 vowels, 8 diphthongs) to read them correctly.
Lots of letters are written but not pronounced like k in knot, l in almond, b in debt, p in receipt, etc.
Consonants are very often written in duplicates but pronounced as a single letter. E.g. cabbage, shudder, suffer, suggest, pull, mummy, happy, hurry, letter, fuzzy etc.
Except m, v, and z all the other letters have more than one pronunciation. This is especially true of vowels. The letter A alone has five pronunciations: /a:/ in arm, /ᴐ/ in false, /ei/ in fate, /ǝ/ in along, and /ea/ in fair. Among consonants ,very often they are either silent or pronounced, as /d/ in judge is silent but pronounced in dab or bad. Additionally, some consonants have many pronunciations as /c/ becomes / s/ in city, center or cycle but k in cat or case, /g/ is /j/ in gin or gem but /g/ in gate or grab.
As there are many pronunciations for one letter, there is also one pronunciation of many letters e.g. awe is open /ᴐ/ beau is /bou/, or queue is /kyu/.
Similarly, the same set of letters can have many pronunciations: e.g. / ough/ can be pronounced as /f/ in tough, as /u/ in through, as /ǝu/ in though, as open /ᴐ/ in thought and /ǝ/ in thorough. Many pronunciations of /ea/ have been listed above.
Another important peculiarity of English is diphthongal sounds (phonemes). Diphthongs are made up of two vowels, one of which is prominent and sonorous while the other one is secondary. English grammarians consider them as one unit equivalent to a vowel. There are 8 diphthongs in English. They are: /ǝo/ as in low or bow, /a:u/ as out and loud, /
a:i/ in light or fight /ei/ in lane or date, /ᴐe/ in loin or boy, /iǝ/ in fear or beer, /Eǝ/ in lair or bear, /uǝ/ in poor or sure. The diphthongs will be discussed in detail in the appendix.
The sounds/ p/,/ t/, and /k/ become /ph/, /th/, and /kh/ when they occur at the beginning of a word. This /ph/ is different from /f/ and is similar to the Hindi /ph/. Remember this happens only in the beginning of the word, as elsewhere it is pronounced as a regular p, t, or k. This peculiarity needs to be mentioned here because native English speakers hear these sounds as b, d, g, if not said so. This is true even of /k/ pronounced in /cat/, /quote/. The /k/ here becomes /kh/ . One should remember that though they are pronounced as /ph/, /th/, /kh/ they are written as /p/,/t/,/k/. The funniest thing is that these sounds are only pronounced in initial position though they are not written so.
English is an accented language, which means certain syllables are stressed. Placing this stress on the proper syllable is significant for conveying the correct meaning. The primary stress (accent) on the first syllable makes it a noun and conveys that it is a thing, /emotion/, object, etc. If it is placed on the second syllable, it is a verb. Some examples are given below:
/‘project/ is a noun ‘ a thing’ while /pro’ject/ is a verb ‘display’
/‘object / is a noun, ‘a thing/ while /ob’ject/ is a verb, ‘to protest’
/‘record/ is a noun, ‘written document’ while /re’cord/ is a verb, ‘to note down facts’.
The stress pattern can be seen in continuous speech too. If one has to talk about ‘one apple’, one would stress both ‘an’ and ‘apple’ in a sentence like,
“It’s ‘an ‘apple.” If one doesn’t have to mention about the oneness of the apple, the sentence would be spoken and read as follows,
“It’snapple.” Where ‘a’ of ‘an’ is almost inaudible first syllable in ‘apple’ as it is stressed, being a noun. In English, unstressed syllables are considered weak syllables and stressed syllables are strong syllable. This affects the desired meaning.
The point here is that stress is important in spoken English and should be remembered while reading any text. This again reminds us that we read as we speak and not as we write.
This brings up the concept of a syllable. A syllable is an important concept that helps to learn correct pronunciation. “It is a unit of spoken language consisting of a single uninterrupted sound formed by a vowel, a diphthong or syllabic consonant alone, or by any of these sounds preceded, followed or surrounded by one or more consonants.” There are also open and closed syllables. When a syllable begins with a vowel and ends with a consonant or has consonants on both sides it is called a closed syllable. If a syllable ends with a vowel, then it is an open syllable. For example:
I, no, spa, and spree are open syllables because they end with a vowel.
An and apt are closed syllables because they end with a consonant.
Bat, spat, belt, spend, strip, and script are closed syllables too because the vowel in the syllable is surrounded by one or more consonants.
In a syllabic consonant like button, (where o is silent and n is a syllabic consonant (contoid), that means the word is made up of two syllables one with /u/ and other with /n/. In the double letters ‘tt’ one of the ‘t’s is silent and the same is true of the word temple where the last /e/ is silent and /l/ is a syllabic consonant (contoid) thus the word has two syllables, where the first one is /e/, a closed syllable and the second is /l/ an open syllable.

These are some of the points to think of when reading/speaking the English language. Let us examine each alphabet and its intricacies over the next few days…