Notation for the 43 Sounds

Whenever a phonics curriculum is devised a decision has to be made as to how to break down all English words into component sounds. The OnTrack Reading curriculum teaches spellings for 43 specific English sounds, consisting of 24 consonant sounds and 19 vowel sounds. Other phonics curricula will differ because they made different choices and sometimes because local accents dictated the curricula to some extent.

It’s necessary to establish some notation so that we can discuss sounds without actually being able to say them, as happens in here. When I use the notation /#/, I mean the sound #, where # is defined as a specific sound. For instance I chose to define oo as the vowel sound we hear in the word soon. Wherever you see the notation /oo/, it will mean the vowel sound in soon. As you will see when you read the list below, most of the symbol choices are obvious. About five of them might be difficult to recall or might need a bit of explanation, particularly /oul/, /err/, /the/, /hw/ and /zh/.

Below are lists of the 24 consonant sounds and 19 vowel sounds in the OnTrack Reading curriculum, or 43 sounds in all:

Consonant Sounds

  1. /b/ as in bet
  2. /c/ as in cot
  3. /d/ as in dip
  4. /f/ as in fan
  5. /g/ as in got
  6. /h/ as in hot
  7. /j/ as in jar
  8. /l/ as in land
  9. /m/ as in mat
  10. /n/ as in nap
  11. /p/ as in pet
  12. /r/ as in red
  13. /s/ as in sip
  14. /t/ as in tip
  15. /v/ as in van
  16. /w/ as in wet
  17. /z/ as in zip
  18. /sh/ as in ship
  19. /ch/ as in chip
  20. /th/ as in thin
  21. /the/ as in this (Symbol for sound doesn’t match spelling)
  22. /ng/ as in rung
  23. /hw/ as in when (Symbol for sound doesn’t match spelling)
  24. /zh/ as in vision (Symbol for sound doesn’t match spelling)

Vowel Sounds

  1. /a/ as in cat
  2. /e/ as in bet
  3. /i/ as in kid
  4. /o/ as in hot
  5. /u/ as in nut
  6. /ae/ as in favor (Symbol for sound doesn’t match spelling)
  7. /ee/ as in see
  8. /ie/ as in tie
  9. /oe/ as in toe
  10. /ue/ as in cue
  11. /oo/ as in zoo
  12. /oul/ as in would
  13. /ow/ as in cow
  14. /oy/ as in boy
  15. /aw/ as in saw
  16. /er/ as in her
  17. /ar/ as in car
  18. /or/ as in for
  19. /err/ as in merry

Several issues are raised when any listing of the sounds of English words is attempted, and that is also the case here, but rather than extend this Page any further, those issues will be explored later in a separate section of the Guide where those who are curious can dig deeper into the reasoning behind the choices made in the OnTrack Reading curriculum.

For now, note that these particular choices were made:

  1. /hw/ differs from /w/ and /h/. I describe it as the “blow out a candle” sound.
  2. /ar/ is always treated as one sound, rather than as two sounds /o/+/r/
  3. /or/ is treated as one sound when it is spelled as or and as orr, rather than as two sounds /oe/+/r/
  4. /err/ is treated as one sound when it is spelled as err, arr, er, ar and ere, rather than as two sounds /ae/+/r/
  5. No consonant sound for the letter “y” as in yes is listed.

Several of the specific symbol choices should also perhaps be explained

  1. /the/ was chosen for the sound heard in words like then and there because the spelling th was already used for the sound in words like think and thin.
  2. /ae/ was chosen to mirror the ee, ie, oe and ue symbols for their respective sounds. Think Mae West for an example, but generally ae is an infrequent spelling of this sound.
  3. /oul/ was chosen because the more common oo spelling in wood was already used for /oo/ as in zoo and the u spelling in push was already used for /u/ as in nut
  4. /hw/ was chosen rather than wh because the way the sound is taught in the OnTrack Reading curriculum is more accurately reflected as hw. That is, /hw/ more closely reflects “blowing out a candle.”
  5. /zh/ was chosen to reflect the infrequent sound encountered in vision and beige because the common spellings of /zh/ are not intuitive reflections of the sound.

Now that we have some understanding on how sounds will be discussed in print, we move on to a discussion of four Phonics Assessment Tests that you can use to determine your child’s particular strengths and weaknesses as he attempts to make sense of the phonics structure of English words.

Next: Testing Blending Skill, or return to the OnTrack Reading Home Page