The English Sounds and Letters: Any Clear Boundary?

Unlike many Nigerian languages that have a one to one correspondence of sounds and letters, the letters and sounds of English pose a serious problem to English language learning and speaking. However, a condition for attaining fluency in English is to know that there is no one to one correlation between the letters and the sounds in the language.

There are 26 letters in English( 21 consonants and 5 vowels) whereas there are 44 sounds(24 consonants and 20 vowels). One of the conditions for attaining fluency in English is therefore to disengage one’s mind from the knowledge of letters when speaking the language. Speech is made up of sounds while writing is made up of letters.
As illustrations, the letter w will be erroneously assumed to generate the sound /w/ at all times. On the contrary, there can be w without /w/ and /w/ without w.

In the words vow, vowel, tower, bow, the letter w is present but there is no sound /w/. Whereas in the words one, linguistics, queen, suite, there is the sound /w/ without the letter w.

There is the /t/ sound in the word pizza and the letter is absent. There is the letter t in pistol and the sound is absent. Letter s is found in president but it generates a /z/ sound while the letter c in precedent gives a /s/ sound.

It is therefore important to learn and commit the sounds to memory to speak the English language fluently.
(C)2016 Bamgbose G.A.