Vowel digraph pronunciation

A vowel digraph is two vowel letters that spell one sound when they appear together — like the ea in eat or the oo in moon. The old classroom slogan that "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" (ea spells ee, ai spells ay, ie spells ee) is true often enough to be useful and false often enough to embarrass you. English has around twenty vowel sounds but only five vowel letters, so digraphs are the spelling system's way of coping — which is exactly why each one has multiple pronunciations. The reliable approach is to learn the main sound of each digraph, then treat every word as a possible exception until you have heard it. This guide gives you the main sounds and the exceptions that actually occur in everyday words.

/iː/ — the default, like the letter name E:

/e/ — the short e of bed, in very common words:

/eɪ/ — the sound of ay, in just three common words:

Before r, ea usually spells the /ɪə/ sound of hear , dear and near , and in earth , learn and early it spells /ɜː/. The head/bread group is the one that catches learners, because it looks identical to eat/sea. The vowel sounds guide explains where each of these vowels sits in the mouth.

/uː/ — the default:

/ʊ/ — the shorter, tenser vowel of book:

The famous stragglers blood and flood rhyme with mud, not food, and before r, oo takes the /ɔː/ of door and floor . The book/look group is small but so frequent that it is worth memorising as a set.

/aʊ/ — the default, the sound of ow in cow:

/uː/ — oo, mainly in French and earlier borrowings:

/ʌ/ — the vowel of up, in common words:

/əʊ/ or /oʊ/ — the "oh" sound:

In unstressed positions, ou weakens to the schwa — the famous, nervous, curious type of ending, covered in the schwa guide. And the whole ough family (thought, tough, through, plough) is ou with a silent gh on the end — see the ough guide for that mess.

ai almost always spells /eɪ/: rain , wait , paid , train , again (in British English). Keep the handful of exceptions in mind — said rhymes with bed, aisle has a silent a and is pronounced like "I'll", and plaid rhymes with bad. Comparatively, ai is the most dependable digraph in English, which is why it is a good default when you are unsure how to spell a /eɪ/ word.

/iː/ — in the body of a word:

/aɪ/ — at the end of a word, it spells the sound of eye:

The famous rule — "i before e except after c, when the sound is ee" — covers believe and receive , and the exceptions are famously few but famous: friend (short e), plus the -cience words like science and conscience , where the letters split into separate syllables.

Read slowly first. Pronounce each syllable deliberately before trying to blend them at full speed. Rushing hides the vowel and consonant shapes your ear needs to learn.

Record yourself. Most phones have a voice memo app — record a word, then compare it to the playback here. Hearing the gap between your version and the model accent makes targeted practice far easier.

Focus on one accent. Jumping between American, British and Australian in the same session creates confusion. Pick the accent you encounter most and stick with it until the patterns feel natural.

Every word above is a button. Set the accent and voice you want on the main screen, then come back — the guides use whatever you chose. To hear two accents against each other, use Compare; to test whether you can actually hear a contrast, use the listening quiz.