This post will discuss letters A through F.

A

Let us look at all the sounds for the letter A.

A as /ꬱ/ in at, and cat, has, ran, etc.

a as /ᴐ/ in all, call, ball, false, often

a as /a/ in arm, farm, father, charm

a as /ǝ/ in arrest, around, along, about

a as /ei/ in a falling diphthong: air, fair, chair, tale, tail, face, date 

Here is an example where all the pronunciations of the letter ‘a’ can be seen in one sentence.

Sally broke her arm when she went to a fair.  She called a doctor, who came along, and sat in the chair to examine her arm.

 

B

B is found in two forms. It is either silent or pronounced. 

For example – 

There is a silent ‘b’ in  doubt, debt, subtle, etc. When two ‘b’s are written together, then one is silent like in rubber.

B is clearly pronounced in the following words: bus, boast, sober, table, cob, nib.

 In this paragraph we find all the pronunciations of /b/.

Mr. Brown kept on borrowing money and soon he was in debt. He lived in his own bubble, pretending they would not doubt about his integrity, but they tried to remind him about it in a subtle way. To avert trouble, he began to avoid them.

C

C is pronounced in two ways.

One is as /s/ before an ‘I’, ‘e’, and ‘y’, as seen below: 

‘s’ before ‘I’ city, circle, cider.

‘s’ before ‘e’ cent, center, certain.

‘s’ before ‘y’ cycle, cyber.

 It is pronounced as /k/ elsewhere, like cat, cot, clever, cob, can, and many more such words.

Another variation of C is  ‘CH’ and it is pronounced in three ways:

As  /ʃ/ in chef, chauffer.

As /ch/ in chair, chop, chain, church.

As /k/ in chamomile, school, scheme.

Like B when it occurs in a pair, then one of two ‘c’s is silent, like Occur, Occult.

In Accident, Accent, and Access where the first ‘c’ is followed by a consonant ‘c’, it is pronounced like ‘k’ but the other ‘c’ occurs before vowels ‘i’ and ‘e’ respectively that’s why it is pronounced as ‘s’.

The below paragraph has tried to capture all variations of the letter C –

City centers should be free of cars. They not only cause a traffic jam, they very often create chaos on roads. Besides there are many school going children and senior citizens in society who are inconvenienced by them. Sometimes these roads become inaccessible to them. Then there are also the chauffeur driven cars that are really careful while driving their cars. So schemes should be developed for comfortable mobility so that people can go from one place to another without any discomfort. 

D

The letter D is like the letter B; it is either silent or pronounced.

It is silent when followed by ‘g,’ as in edge, wedge, dodge, judge.

It is pronounced in words like draft, day, dare do, dog, odor, made, said, guard.

Again, when there are two of them together, one of the d’s is also silent like in ‘sudden’.

An example of a sentence with all the variations of the letter D –

Hold this doll properly. Do not put it on the ledge. A sudden jerk will make it will fall down.

E

E is a vowel and it has many pronunciations like A. It is pronounced by the front of the tongue, where it is raised to the alveolus less than that of the Hindi /e/ but higher than the English /ꬱ/ /bꬱt/.

Examples of this sound are –

  /e/ in set, text, spend, check, cheque, melt, smell, quench, petal, nest.

/i/ in begin, receipt, reply.

/i:/ in be, bee, me, key, feet, feat.

/ǝ/ in err, her, ever, herb.

The ‘e’ is unpronounced in words like age, came, late, name, castle, waste, eye, and many more.

An example with all the variations of E –

I wrote a cheque in my mother’s name, but I have begun to feel that she will never use it.   

F                                

F is a consonant and pronounced with the teeth of the lower jaw and the upper lip.

Like others, when two Fs come together as ‘ff,’ one of them is silent; as in puff, stiff, coffee.

F is pronounced as ‘v’ when it comes along with F otherwise it is clearly pronounced, like fat, fault, fiber, infinity, infant, sift.

Some examples of variations in F –

The fun of going to the fair seems to be the stuff of childhood.

FIFA is offering a big fan fare.