The Pronunciation of American Vowels Isn’t Easy!

Have you ever heard automated robots that pronounce words?  Often times they are distorted sounding because the robot doesn’t know the proper pronunciation of the vowels.  It may have been programmed to know that an “o” letter sounds like the long “o” sound.  Any word that has an “o” sounds like a long “o.”  Words may  sound like this:

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An inexperienced, new language learner may look at American English words and pronounce them just as they are written or try to say the word using the exact vowel pronunciation.  As a non-native English speaker, you must learn which vowel pronunciation to use when pronouncing new words.  There are some rules that can be learned but unfortunately, there are no rules or exceptions to the rules for many others and it is a matter of memorizing the pronunciation. 

With many exceptions present in English, I am going to share with you a vowel pronunciation rule that has no exceptions!  Now that is a treat.

Every time that you see a single-syllable word that has an /e/ at the end, the vowel that precedes that /e/ is pronounced with a long sound. 

Lake=long /a/

Smoke=long /o/

Rate=long /a/

Every vowel in the English language has multiple spellings so don’t rely on the spelling of a word for the proper pronunciation.  Additionally, be careful with words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently like bow (/ow/) and bow (pronounced with long o).