American English Pronunciation and Phonetics

Do you ever feel like the English spelling system does not match the sounds of spoken English? It seems that way doesn't it? Since English is not a phonetic language there is not always a one-on-one relationship between the letters in the English alphabet and spoken sounds. This can cause problems when you want to pronounce English words.

The 26 letters in the English (Roman) alphabet make many different sounds in spoken American English. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, American English has 25 consonant sounds and up to 18 vowel sounds (the exact number of sounds may vary from region to region).

Let's look at some sound-spelling situations that are frequently confusing to students who are learning to speak English. We'll start with the letter "s".

The letter S

When you are speaking English the letter "s" can represent several different sounds depending on its location in a word.

In the word same the "s" sounds like /s/.

In the word leisure the "s" sounds like /zh/.

In the word design the "s" sounds like /z/.

The fact that "s" has three sounds can be very confusing when you are learning to speak English from a written text!

The letter C

Let's look at some English words that begin with the consonant "c".

city

century

cat

cut

cot

The letter "c" in the words city and century sounds like /s/. The letter "c" in the words cat and cut and cot sounds like /k/.

Look carefully at the spelling of the five words above. Can you figure out the rule or pattern used to determine the spoken sound of the letter "c"?

The rule is that "c" sounds like /s/ when it falls before the vowels "i" and "e". It sounds like the /k/ when it falls before the vowels "a", "o" and "u".

You can see from the examples above that the position of a consonant within a word can change the way it sounds. This happens frequently when you are pronouncing English.

Since English is not phonetic you will need to learn some of these sound/spelling patterns you need to learn if you want to improve your English pronunciation and American accent.