Phonemes

Phonemes are the individual sounds that make up a language. In English we have more than 40 phonemes, but we have only 26 letters. So, some phonemes are usually spelled using two letters working together; this is called a digraph.

In English, most phonemes can be spelled more than one way. For example, the sound /ai/ can be spelled "ay" (pay), "a_e" (cake), "ai" (rain), "eigh" (neighbor), "ea" (break), and a few other ways.

The same spelling can also be used to represent more than one phoneme. For example, the spelling "ou" can be used to indicate the sounds /ow/ (loud), /u/ (touch), /ue/ (soup), /oa/ (shoulder), and /o/ (cough).

In Montessori, we start out by associating just one grapheme (a single letter or digraph) with one phoneme. This means, for example, that at the beginning we are not yet showing that the letter "g" can be used to spell the /j/ sound, or that the letter "c" can be used to spell the /s/ sound. This extra layer of complexity is not introduced until later.

Phoneme	As in:	Tricks for correct pronunciation
a	at	Do not say the letter name: "ay"
e	end	Do not say the letter name: "ee"
i	in	Do not say the letter name: "I"
o	on	Do not say the letter name: "oh"
u	up	Do not say the letter name: "you"
b	cab	Do not say "bee" or "buh." Think of how it sounds at the end of a word like "cab"
c / k	cat kiss	Do not say "see" or "kay"
d	dog
f	fig
g	give
h	hill
j	jam
l	ball
m	man
n	net
p	pan
r	red
s	sand	Say "sss," like the sound of a snake hissing. Do not say "ess."
t	top
v	van
w	wet
x	box	Do not say "eks," and don't even mention the word xylophone.
y	yet
z	zoo	Say "zzz" like a buzzing bee. Do not say "zee."
ai	aim	Same as the letter name: A
ee	se	Same as the letter name: E
ie	pie	Same as the letter name: I
oa	road	Same as the letter name: O
ue	due	Like the letter name U but without the 'y' sound
ue	cue	Like the letter name: U
ou	out	"OW!"
oy	toy
oo	look
ch	chip
sh	ship
th	thin
th	then
ng	sonng
zh	vision deja vu