Letter sounds chart

Alphabet Sounds Chart - with Letter Formation

An alphabet sounds chart is a great resource for young readers and writers. I created it specifically for my Kindergartner.

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**The free download can be found at the END of this post. Click on the teal download button.

Alphabet Sounds Chart

After creating our numbers 1-20 chart, I got LOTS of requests for an alphabet chart, too.

We already have a beginning sounds chart, but the alphabet sounds chart I’m posting today is a little simpler for younger learners.

This sound chart is a little different from other charts that you might find on the web.

For one thing, the letter formation for each letter is included. So, learners can use this as a phonics chart to help them spell as well as remember the formation of their letters. Woot!

Secondly, it includes more than just one sound per letter.

• The vowels include the long and short sounds.
• Cc and Gg include both their hard and soft sounds.
• Xx includes the /z/ sound you hear at the beginning of xylophone and the /ks/ sound at the end of box.
• Yy has three sounds featured: 1- the /y/ sound at the beginning of yarn, 2- the long i sound at the end of fly, and 3- the long e sound at the end of baby.

Handling Multiple Sounds with Young Learners

Now, this may seem rather complicated to work on all these multiple sounds, but it can be as simple as this example:

Child is writing: I am… and wants to write happy to end the sentence. She sounds through each letter, using the chart when needed.

If I’m working with the child, when she gets to the -y, I’d say something like: “It sounds like an e goes on the end, doesn’t it? But when we hear that /ee/ sound on the end of words, it is sometimes spelled with a y. Look on your chart and find the letter y. Do you see the baby? The last letter in baby is also a y. Let’s write a y at the end of happy.”

The key is to keep it simple. I doesn’t need to become a full lesson for knowing how to spell these letters with multiple sounds. That wouldn’t be developmentally appropriate for most Kindergartners.

Two Quick Notes:

• This alphabet sounds chart is offered in color & blackline in the download! Keep scrolling to find it below.
• There are TWO versions. Version 1 on the download includes EAGLE as the key picture for long e. Version 2 includes EGRET as the key picture for long e.

Looking for more Alphabet Ideas?

Alphabet Sounds App

Beginning Sounds Trace & Clip Cards

Printable Alphabet Puzzles

Alphabet Letter Mazes with Different Fonts

Get the freebie below!

Enjoy!
~Becky

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Word Beginnings Sounds Chart | guruparents

Try using this Word Beginning Sounds Chart when you start teaching your child to read. The chart covers twenty of the most common two letter sounds used to begin words.

The chart has bright illustrations that will help your child remember the sounds associated with each two letter sound.

The large lettering allows for practice in reciting the times tables and for quizzes to be played with the chart.

Download the free Word Beginning Sounds Chart >>

How the sounds have been selected

The chart above contains a range of sounds from letter blends through to digraphs (unique sounds).

Blends occur when each letter can be heard in a particular sound. In the word frog the blend fr occurs. In the /fr/ sound, both the f and r sound can be heard.

The majority of the sounds in the chart are blends that your child can sound out as each letter can be heard in the sound.

The combinations: BL, BR, DR, FL, FR, GL, GR, PL, PR, SM, SN, SP, ST and TR are all blends.

Digraphs occur when two letters form a unique sound. In the word phone, the digraph ph occurs. The letters p and h combine to form the /f/ sound.

Digraphs can not be sounded out. Your child needs to recognize these letter combinations and the unique sounds they form.

The combinations: CH, KN, PH, QU, SH and TH are all digraphs.

Why teaching blends is important

Teaching your child to recognize the sounds of certain letter combinations is one of the steps to take when teaching your child to read. Once your child can recite the alphabet and recognize the letters and the sounds of each letter, it is a perfect time to start.

To help your child when they are learning to sound out words, you need to teach them the sounds that certain letters make in combination.

Let’s take the example of the word chop. The sounds in chop are /ch/-/o/-/p/. However if your child is unaware of the /ch/ sound they will attempt to sound out the word as /k/-/h/-/o/-/p/.

Terminology explained

Phonemes – are unique sounds that are used in combination to create words. Examples include ch as in chain, sh in ship, sch as in school.

Digraphs – are combinations of two letters, one of which is a consonant, to form a unique sound (phoneme).

Dipthong – are combinations of two vowels to form a unique sound (phoneme).

Blends – are combinations of two consonants where you can hear each letter in the sound that is formed.

Trigraphs – are combinations of three letters to form a Phoneme. Examples include scr and spr.

Free Printable Sounds Chart – Blends and Digraphs

Word Beginning Sounds Chart (pdf version)

Sounds and letters of the Russian language - scheme, table, transcription

Contents:
• What is sound?
• What sounds are there?
• How are sounds pronounced?
• Transcription of the word
• Color scheme

Sounds belong to the phonetics section. The study of sounds is included in any school curriculum in the Russian language. Acquaintance with sounds and their main characteristics occurs in the lower grades. A more detailed study of sounds with complex examples and nuances takes place in middle and high school. This page provides only basic knowledge of the sounds of the Russian language in a compressed form. If you need to study the device of the speech apparatus, the tonality of sounds, articulation, acoustic components and other aspects that are beyond the scope of the modern school curriculum, refer to specialized textbooks and textbooks on phonetics.

What is sound?

Sound, like words and sentences, is the basic unit of language. However, the sound does not express any meaning, but reflects the sound of the word. Thanks to this, we distinguish words from each other. Words differ in the number of sounds (port - sport, crow - funnel), set of sounds (lemon - estuary, cat - mouse), sequence of sounds (nose - dream, bush - knock) up to a complete mismatch of sounds (boat - boat, forest - park ).

What sounds are there?

In Russian, sounds are divided into vowels and consonants. There are 33 letters and 42 sounds in Russian: 6 vowels, 36 consonants, 2 letters (ь, ъ) do not indicate a sound. The discrepancy in the number of letters and sounds (not counting b and b) is due to the fact that there are 6 sounds for 10 vowels, 36 sounds for 21 consonants (if we take into account all combinations of consonant sounds deaf / voiced, soft / hard). On the letter, the sound is indicated in square brackets.
There are no sounds: [e], [e], [yu], [i], [b], [b], [g '], [w '], [c '], [th], [h ], [sch].

How are sounds pronounced?

We pronounce sounds while exhaling (only in the case of the interjection "a-a-a", expressing fear, the sound is pronounced while inhaling. ). The division of sounds into vowels and consonants is related to how a person pronounces them. Vowel sounds are pronounced by the voice due to the exhaled air passing through the tense vocal cords and freely exiting through the mouth. Consonant sounds consist of noise or a combination of voice and noise due to the fact that the exhaled air meets an obstacle in its path in the form of a bow or teeth. Vowel sounds are pronounced loudly, consonant sounds are muffled. A person is able to sing vowel sounds with his voice (exhaled air), raising or lowering the timbre. Consonant sounds cannot be sung, they are pronounced equally muffled. Hard and soft signs do not represent sounds. They cannot be pronounced as an independent sound. When pronouncing a word, they affect the consonant in front of them, make it soft or hard.

Transcription of a word

Transcription of a word is a recording of sounds in a word, that is, in fact, a record of how the word is pronounced correctly. Sounds are enclosed in square brackets. Compare: a is a letter, [a] is a sound. The softness of consonants is indicated by an apostrophe: p - letter, [p] - hard sound, [p '] - soft sound. Voiced and voiceless consonants are not marked in writing. The transcription of the word is written in square brackets. Examples: door → [dv'er '], thorn → [kal'uch'ka]. Sometimes stress is indicated in transcription - an apostrophe before a vowel stressed sound.

There is no clear correspondence between letters and sounds. In the Russian language, there are many cases of substitution of vowel sounds depending on the place of stress of a word, substitution of consonants or dropping out of consonant sounds in certain combinations. When compiling a transcription of a word, the rules of phonetics are taken into account.

Color scheme

In phonetic parsing, words are sometimes drawn with color schemes: letters are painted with different colors depending on what sound they mean. Colors reflect the phonetic characteristics of sounds and help you visualize how a word is pronounced and what sounds it consists of.

All vowels (stressed and unstressed) are marked with a red background. Iotated vowels are marked green-red: green means a soft consonant sound [y ‘], red means the vowel following it. Consonants with solid sounds are colored blue. Consonants with soft sounds are colored green. Soft and hard signs are painted in gray or not painted at all.

- vowel, - vowel iot - hard consonant, - soft consonant, - soft or hard consonant, - does not mean a sound.

The blue-green color is not used in the schemes for phonetic analysis, since a consonant cannot be both soft and hard at the same time. The blue-green color in the table above is only used to show that the sound can be either soft or hard.

Words with the letter ё must be written through ё. Phonetic parsing of the words "everything" and "everything" will be different!

Vowel sounds and letters.

We will teach you how to write without mistakes and tell stories in an interesting way

Start learning

The correct pronunciation of words is one of the components of a beautiful and literate speech. To achieve this, you will first have to study the sounds themselves. In this article, we will figure out together what vowel sounds are, how many vowels are in the alphabet of the Russian language, and what sounds they can represent.

What are vowels and sounds

Vowel sounds are those sounds that we freely convey with our voice. Hence their name comes from: voice means "voice". When pronouncing, air exits through the mouth and does not create noise, and the position of the tongue and lips determines which vowel sound we will pronounce.

There are much fewer vowels in Russian than consonants. There are 6 of them in total: [a], [o], [i], [s], [y] and [e]. To understand whether a vowel sound is in front of you or not, try to sing it. For example:

• a-a-a ,

• woo

• s-s-s .

If it works, then the sound is a vowel. You can't do that with consonants.

There are more vowels than sounds - there are 10 of them: a, i, u, u, o, e, e, e, i, s . This difference is due to the fact that some of these letters can represent two sounds and are pronounced using a combination of a vowel and a consonant [y']. For example, in word spruce the letter e expresses two sounds - [y'] and [e]. Let's look at the table all the vowel sounds and the letters that represent them.

Demo lesson in Russian

Take the test at the introductory lesson and find out what topics separate you from the "five" in Russian.

How vowel sounds are related to syllables

Vowel sounds form syllables - sound segments of words that we pronounce with one breath. One syllable can be either a vowel with one or more consonants, or a vowel alone. There is even a rule by which syllables can be counted: how many vowels in a word - so many syllables.

For example, in the word journey there are 5 vowels: [u], [i], [e], [i] and [e]. This means that it has 5 syllables: p-te-she-stvi-e .

Test yourself!

Count the number of syllables in the words: try on, tanner, well-groomed, care, prefix, capital, wet, invitation, orange .

Vowel sounds and stress

Now let's see what groups vowel sounds are divided into. Sometimes their pronunciation depends on whether the stress falls on them, that is, whether we single them out with our voice. So vowel sounds are divided into stressed and unstressed. Here are some examples:

Stress in Russian can fall on any of the existing vowel sounds. However, only 4 of them can be unstressed - these are [a], [i], [y] and [s]. In this position, we pronounce sounds weaker than under stress, because of which they can change qualities and sound differently.

Interestingly, the vowels [o] and [e] can only be stressed. There are only a couple of exceptions to this rule: for example, in words cocoa and canoe sounds [o] and [e] in an unstressed position.

How unstressed vowels are related to consonants

How an unstressed vowel sounds depends on the consonant that precedes it. Or rather, from its hardness or softness. If it is a hard consonant, it can be followed by unstressed vowels [y], [a] and [s]. When we talk about a soft consonant, it is followed by unstressed vowels [y] and [and].

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Test yourself

It's time to find out if you now understand well what vowel sounds are in Russian. To do this, we have prepared tasks for self-examination.

Task 1

List all the vowels in these words:

Task 2

Name 5 words each in which the sounds [a], [i], [y] and [s] would be in a stressed position.

Task 3

Name 5 words in which an unstressed vowel would come after a hard consonant and 5 more words where it would follow a soft consonant.

Task 4

Count the number of syllables in the words below (don't forget to use the rule you learned at the beginning of the article!):

• weightless,

• sunrise,

• adventure,

• painter,

• perpetuate,

• nice,

• image,

• category,

• exciting,

• melting,

• snowflake.

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