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The /ɪ/ vowel is a high-front sound. Your tongue should be positioned high in your mouth, and shifted toward the front. Your lips should be relaxed, and only slightly open. Vibrate your vocal cords with your mouth in this position.
Long I Pattern: i (Followed by Two Consonants)
This is a new kind of pattern for us, where a vowel followed by two consonants makes a long vowel sound. This kind of pattern works in both Long I and Long O vowels. In these cases, we will have a single “i” that is followed by two consonants.
[i] is a front vowel, so its F2 is substantially higher than that of [u] and [ɑ], which are back vowels.
Short vowel sound (/i/): e.g. Bit
This short /i/ sound is pronounced /ɪ/, like in words kitten, milk, and ring.
Short e/i is a common sound confusion for many students. I like to tell my students that "/i/ makes you grin and /e/ drops the chin." This is a catchy saying that is easy to use and brings awareness back to the mouth formation.
Some common Short I words include fish, sing, spin, and list.
The letter 'i' by itself can be pronounced as a long vowel sound: Bike. Kite.
Short I Spelling Word Questions
Use the list of 'short i' spelling words to answer simple questions. Words: big, crib, fish, fix, grin, hid, hill, king, lid, milk, six, wings.
Long I Word Wheel
When you spin the wheel, words containing a long "i" sound appear, including dime, ice, nine, bike, dice, eye, hike, iron, kite, fly, vine, and slice.
Some examples of tense vowels include i, e, o, u, ɔ, and ɑ. In contrast to the articulation of a lax vowel, the tongue and other parts of the vocal apparatus are relatively tense in the articulation of tense vowels.
In English, the letters A, E, I, O, and U are called vowels. The letter Y is a semi-vowel. (We will discuss this later.) The other letters in the alphabet are called consonants.
The Truth About 'Y': It's Mostly a Vowel. We need 'y' to be a consonant, but it acts more like a vowel. By first grade, we were taught that the letters a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y are vowels.
Short vowels usually appear at the beginning of the word or between two consonants. Examples of short vowels are found in the words: cat, pig, bus.
To make the /æ/ sound:
Position your tongue low in your mouth, and shift it toward the front. The muscles of your lips and mouth should be relaxed. Vibrate your vocal cords with your mouth in this position. This vowel is made lower in the mouth than the /ɛ/ vowel.
Long vowels can be made with a single letter or a digraph (two letters making one sound). The sound of i in igloo is a short vowel sound. The sound of i in night is a long vowel sound.
Moving on to O.
Oh my, oh my, the long vowel sound for O sounds like “oh”! Some more examples include oatmeal, oval, open, rose, poem, go, and yoga.
“Toad,” “gold,” and “phone” are words with the long o sound.
Long i – silent, bike, light, my. Long o – go, home, toe, boat, snow.
Long vowels sound like the vowel name itself (a, e, i, o or u). Long 'i' sounds like the 'i' in mile. Short vowel sounds sound different from their long sounds. Short 'i' sounds like the 'i' in mill.