Hair & Beauty

Pronunciation:  1.3. The English Alphabet

Table of contents

1. The sounds

2. The English alphabet

3. Practice

4. Glossary

“I know the X’s and O’s of football.

I just don’t know the other 24

letters. And as a writer, this

bothers me.” – Jarod Kintz

1. The sounds

There are two kinds of sounds: Vowel Sounds (V) and Consonant Sounds (C). For example, in duck, there are three sounds, consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC). The number of sounds in a word is not usually the same as the number of letters. We can see this if we write the word using phonemic symbols. For example, duck is /dʌk/.

Writers often play with the sounds in words. For example, if they are finding a name for a cartoon character, they might:

• Repeat the first sound, e. g. Donald Duck.
• Repeat the final sound or sounds (this is called rhyme), e. g. Ronald McDonald.

2. The English alphabet

The English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters (each having an uppercase and a lowercase form) with 40 different sounds.

3. Practice

Practice saying the phrases below with abbreviations.

a) a Personal Computer  (PC)

b) a Disc Jockey (DJ)

c) a Portable Document Format (PDF)

d) the United Kingdom (UK)

e) the United States of America (USA)

f) the European Union (EU)

g) the British Broadcast Company (BBC)

h) an Automatic Teller Machine (ATM)

i) Ante Meridian (AM)

j) Post Meridian (PM)

k) a Digital Video Disk (DVD)

l) a Personal Assistant (PA)

m) All Right (OK)

n) Music Tele Vision (MTV)

o) a Post Script (PS)

p) As Soon As Possible (ASAP)

q) Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA)

r) Do It Yourself (DIY)

s) Bring Your Own Bottle (BYOB)

t) a Tea Spoon (TSP)

u) an Avenue (AVE)

v) a Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

w) a Senior Vice President (SVP)

x) Laugh Out Loud (LOL)

y) the Stanford University Libraries (SUL)

z) an Universal Serial Bus (USB)

4. Glossary

V: = Vowel

C: = Consonant

PHS = Phonemic Symbol

UC = Uppercase

LC = Lowercase