Spellings of the English language

an introduction to graphemes

The English language has over forty sounds but only twenty-six letters. Because there are fewer letters than sounds, many sounds, such as the /ch/ in chip, are represented by a letter pair or letter group. Learning to read English would be difficult enough if this were the only quirk of the English writing system. But unfortunately, as anyone reading this article knows, many sounds are represented in more than one way, and many letters or letter groups represent more than one sound. Read the rest for free on Substack.