Pop Quiz: How many vowels are there?

How many vowels are there in the English language?

Did you say 5 (a, e, i, o, and u) and sometimes "Y"?

The saying "There are five vowels in English and sometimes Y" is not true.

If you said 5-6 that's actually not correct. Even though that's how most of us learned to define vowels when we were young, it's completely wrong. Keep reading to understand why and to learn how many vowels there really are.

The letters A, E, I, O, and U.

A Common Classroom Practice

I was observing in a school earlier this week, and I had the chance to coach a teacher who was teaching upper elementary grade students.

I noticed that she was teaching students about when the "y" at the end of some base words changes to "i" when adding certain suffixes. Her teaching went something like this:

---

For words that end in "y", the "y" will change to "i":

• When a suffix is added, and

• When the base word is a consonant followed by a "y", but not

• When the base word has a vowel followed by the "y".

Then examples were given like this:

• Consonant then "y"

  • study + ed = studied

  • carry + es = carries

  • cry + ed= cried

• Vowel then "y"

  • play + ed = played

  • stay + es = stayed

  • key + s = keys

---

What's the Problem?

Do you see the problem with the definition yet?

The letter Y doesn't change to I because of the letter in front of it.

Let's start with one example of the problem. With the example of cry, if you add -ed, the "y" changes to "i"and you get "cried". However, if you add -ing, the "y" remains and you get "crying".

You might say, "Well, Steve, that's no problem. My teacher taught me that the exception to the rule is when you add suffixes that begin with "i", you keep the "y". You just need to update your definition."

Well, maybe that's what's happening, or maybe it's something else!

Look at the examples of play, stay, and key. Is there a vowel "in front of the 'y'"?

I mean it. Really think about it.

Are you thinking, "Well yeah, Steve, can't you see the 'a' in play, the 'a' in stay, and the 'e' in key?"

That's not what I asked, though. Yes, I do see those letters. I asked: Are there vowels in front of the "y"?

If you're still unsure of where I'm going with this, let me ask you this a different way.

How many sounds are there in the word "play"?

You should say three sounds. What are those sounds?

1. /p/

2. /l/

3. long /ā/

The first two sounds are consonant sounds, right? What type of sound is the third sound?

That's right! The third sound is a vowel sound.

Now...how is the vowel sound spelled? It's spelled as the combination of the letters "a" and "y", correct?

So, back to my earlier question: "Is there a vowel before the 'y'"?

No. There isn't.

The -ay spelling by itself is the vowel. There is no vowel before it.

That's the problem. The "rule" that the teacher I was observing was teaching students was actually based on a misunderstanding of English phonics and orthography that has been repeated and perpetuated by bad curricula for decades.

We Need a Correct Understanding of Phonics and Etymology

The heart of the issue is that people who misunderstand phonics and orthography end up making stuff up to try to make sense of English. However, that just causes confusion because then there are a bunch of "exceptions to the rule" and kids often give up trying to make sense of things because the "rules" they learn don't actually make sense. This, in turn, negatively impacts their reading and spelling in long lasting ways.

The 26 letters in the alphabet have nothing to do with how English words are spelled, just like the digits 0-9 have nothing to do with the order of operations in mathematics.

In this particular case, the teacher was trying to use the English alphabet as the foundation for teaching the rules of spelling. In other words, her "rule" required students to look at the letter that comes right before the letter "y". The truth is, the alphabet has nothing to do with how our words are spelled, just like the digits 0-9 have nothing to do with the order of operations in mathematics.

The letters of the alphabet are just symbols, just like the digits 0-9. We use the letters in a variety of combinations to represent the speech sounds (i.e., phonemes) of the English language. Just like the digits 0-9 can vary in meaning based on their place value, our letters can vary in which of the 44 English phonemes they represent.

For example, "th" can represents either unvoiced /th/ (thirst) or voiced /th/ (that), but it never represents /t/ + /h/. Similarly, "-ay" represents long /ā/, and "igh" represents long /ī/. These are examples of digraphs and trigraphs, which means a single sound represented by two or three letters. (For more on the topic of digraphs and trigraphs, read my blog on the topic.)

To understand why our English spelling orthography works the way it does, one has to first understand English phonics, and then some basic etymology.

To understand why our English spelling orthography works the way it does (e.g., why "y" sometimes changes to "i", why "i" sometimes comes before "e" and sometimes doesn't, etc.), one has to first understand English phonics. Then, for tricky words, one has to have a basic understanding of English word history (i.e., etymology). Phonics and etymology drive 96% of English spelling.

Basic phonics explains 50% of English words, advanced phonics explains another 34%, and etymology explains the perceived variations in another 12%, leaving only 4% of English words that are truly irregular.

How Many Vowels? Here's the Answer!

As it relates to phonics, there are 19 vowels in English. You heard me right, 19! Not 5-6.

There are 19 vowels in English.

A vowel is defined by the type of sound it creates. Vowels open the mouth and air flows freely, whereas consonants close the mouth and airflow is blocked by the teeth, lips, or tongue.

There are different types of vowels, including long, short, diphthong, r-controlled, and schwa. The 19 vowels are displayed in the image of the Vowel Valley below.

There are 25 consonants in English (e.g., /b/, /k/, /ng/, /sh/, etc.).

Vowels open the mouth and air flows freely, whereas consonants close the mouth and airflow is blocked.

The Vowel Valley: A Depiction of How Vowel Sounds are Shaped by the Mouth

Each of the 19 vowels in English have a specific set of spellings. The short vowel sounds of /ă/, /ĕ/, /ĭ/, /ŏ/, and /ŭ/ are the easiest to learn. They really only have one spelling each: the single letters a, e, i, o, and u respectively. The other vowel types, however are more tricky and have multiple spellings, often between 2-8 spellings.

The best early literacy curricula have Sound-Spelling Cards like the one below that illustrate all of the most common ways to spell a particular sound. In the case of long /ā/, there are four common ways to spell the sound. (While there are a few other ways, they are infrequent and not typically represented on these types of instructional materials.)

The VEC Sound-Spelling Card for the long sound of /ā/.

So Why Does Y Change to I Sometimes?

Returning to why the letter "y" sometimes changes to "i" and sometimes doesn't, it has everything to do with the sound that is represented by the spelling that the "y" is part of.

Typically speaking, when the "y" exists as a single grapheme by itself (i.e., as a letter, it represents the whole sound and is not part of a digraph) at the end of a base word, it will be representing the sounds long /ē/ or long /ī/. The reason for that is historical. In Latin, for example, there was no letter "y". Latin had a letter "i" that was equivalent to the English vowel sounds of long /ē/ or long /ī/, or equivalent to the English consonant sounds of /j/ or /y/, depending on its position in the word.

Since many of our English words are inherited from Latin, many of which came to use through French first, our English spelling system (orthography) has a way of tracking back to that original Latin "i".

What happened in most, if not all of the words, that have a "y" that changes to "i" in English is that the root of the word originally had an "i". English words don't end in "i", so root words that originally ended in "i" in Latin, Greek, French, etc. were converted to end in "y" for the purpose of English orthography. It's actually more accurate to say that the "y" is changing back to its original form of "i" when we're teaching students about this phenomenon in English.

It's more accurate to say that the "y" is changing back to original form of "i".

Here's an example: Study.

• study is derived from

  • studien (early 12 century English) from

    • studiare (Medieval Latin) from

      • studiam (Latin) meaning "to study, to apply, or to be diligent)

      • All of its history before modern English had the letter "i" where the "y" now sits.

• study + ed = studied (reverts back to Latin "i")

• study + es = studies (reverts back to Latin "i")

• study + ing = studying (reason: From what I've deduced, when you had two "i's" together in Latin, the first one became a consonant /j/ or /y/, so it seems that English is marking that you keep the "y" as a vowel sound instead of making it a consonant sound.)

Wrapping Up

In summary, I've written this blog to shed light on a common problem that exists when people teach reading and spelling. Many people don't understand phonics and etymology. Because of this, incorrect "rules" get taught that were made up somewhere along the line in an attempt to make sense of our language, but those rules fail with exception upon exception. These exceptions confuse kids.

I used the example of the fact that there are 19 vowels (even though most people will answer 5 or 6) to highlight that when teaching the Science of Reading, teachers really need to understand phonics first and foremost. Phonics is the method by which English orthography consistently and coherently represents speech sounds (phonemes) with written English symbols (graphemes).

While English is a more complex symbolic system than many other languages, it actually does have a rationale behind it. It's just that the rationale blends both phonics and word history, whereas easier languages only have phonics. If teachers and students understand this blended process, it makes learning to read and spell a lot more straight-forward.

While English is a more complex symbolic system than many other languages, it actually does have a rationale behind it, which makes learning to read and spell a lot more straight-forward.

Curious to learn more? Drop me a note in my contact form! I love to connect with you.