Lesson · Spelling to Sound · A letter and its sound

The Silent E and the Vowel's Name

Add an e to the end of hop and you have hope. The e is not said, but it changes the word before it: the o now says its own name. The rule is right on 131 of 140 words. The nine that break it are words you use every day, and they fall into three groups.

Open the interactive lesson Practice

vowel, consonant, e: the vowel says its name 131 of 140 hop hope bit bite tub tube before r the rule is right 1 of 19

Counted on the 2,800 words

Core ideas

What this lesson establishes

Three ideas, and the second answers a common worry.

The last letter changes the vowel before it

Hop has a short vowel. Hope has the same letters and an e, and the o now says what the letter is called. The e itself is not said. It marks the word as one with a long vowel.

The words that break it are common

You might expect a rule's misses to be rare words. These are not. Have, come and some are among the commonest words in English, and give, love and move are not far behind. If you learn the rule and not the list, you will be wrong on words you meet every day.

A letter after the vowel can change the rule

Put an r before the final e and the rule all but stops working. The a in care does not say its name. The table scores these words apart so that they do not hide the result for all the others.

The material

The nine words that break it

Of 140 words, nine are said some other way. They are not nine separate facts.

Say hop, then say hope. The second word has one more letter, and you do not say it. What changed is the vowel: in hope the o says its own name.

That is the silent e rule. It is about words of one part, said in one beat, as hop is and hoping is not. Such a word, when it ends in a vowel, a consonant and an e, is said with the vowel's name. Bit becomes bite, tub becomes tube, mat becomes mate.

What was scored

The lab takes every word of the list with one part that ends in a vowel, a consonant and an e. It leaves out words where the consonant is w, x, y or r. Then it checks the vowel against a dictionary, a book that records how words are said. That gives 140 words.

The rule is right on 131 of them, which is 93.6%. Time, make, hope, tube, huge and wide are among the words it gets right. In huge the u says you, which the table counts as the name of u.

The nine that break it

The misses are come, have, give, lose, love, move, none, prove and some. Read the list again. These are not the words a dictionary notes as odd. They are among the words a student needs first.

Sort them and three groups appear. Have and give keep a short vowel. Come, some, love and none are said with the vowel of cup. Lose, move and prove are said with oo. Each group is small enough to say out loud in a few seconds.

There would be a tenth. The dictionary's first entry for live is the word in live music, said with the sound of eye, so the table counts it as right. The verb live, which you use far more often, has the short vowel of give. The table reads one entry and says so; your ear can add the tenth word to the first group.

Why have and give are different

English words almost never end in v. When the last sound of a word is v, an e is written after it. So the e in have is not a mark for a long vowel. It is only there so the word does not end in v. Save and wave have the same e and do follow the rule, because there the vowel is also long. The letters tell you the pattern; the dictionary tells you which of the two jobs the e is doing.

The same shape before r

Take the words that end in a vowel, r and e. The rule says the a in care should say its name, as it does in make, and it does not. The table scores 19 of these words apart. The rule is right once, for here, which is 5.3%.

The other 18 sort the same way. Nine, among them care, rare, share, there and where, are said with the vowel of bed. Six, bore, core, more, score, shore and store, are said with the vowel of or. Two, pure and sure, have the vowel of book, and mere has the vowel of sit. An r changes the vowel before it in every way you can see here, which is why the table keeps these words apart.

Interactive

A spelling rule against the dictionary

Each rule reads only the letters; the dictionary says what is actually said

the rule—

words scored—

the rule is right—

share right—

wrong—

the words it gets wrong—

set aside—

different sounds—

Where the sounds come from

Every sound, part count and strong part here is read from the first pronunciation in CMUdict, the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which records American speech. Its licence asks that this notice travel with anything made from it:

Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved.

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This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced
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Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member
companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge
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Method

Reading a word that ends in e

Four steps.

Check the shape

The word must have one part, and its end must be a vowel, a consonant and a final e, as in make. The consonant is not w, x, y or r.

Say the vowel as the letter's name

A says ay, i says the word eye, o says oh and u says oo or you. For e it says ee.

Do not say the final e

Make has one sound after the m and it is ay and then k. The last letter is only a mark.

Then check the nine

If the word is have, give, come, some, love, none, lose, move or prove, the rule does not apply.

Check yourself

Score 0 / 0

Choose the answer you can justify.

Nine misses in three groups

Here are the nine, sorted by what the vowel does instead.

short vowel have, give u as in cup come, some, love, none oo lose, move, prove

The first group has a reason you can use. English spelling almost never ends a word in v, so the e in have and give is there because of the v, and not to change the vowel. The second group says one sound, the vowel in cup, though the spelling has an o. The third group has the sound oo, though o would say oh. Four words have no simple reason, and that is honest: you learn come, some, love and none as a short list.

Common mistakes

Thinking the exceptions are rare wordsThey are have, give, come, some, love, none, lose, move and prove. A student meets most of them in the first week.

Saying the final eThe e at the end of hope is never said. It is a sign for the vowel before it. A student who says hope in two parts has read the sign as a sound.

Using the rule before rCare, more, sure, there and where have the same shape and do not follow the rule. The table scores 19 words of this kind and the rule is right once.

Check your understanding

✓

Finish when you can read a word of one part that ends in a vowel, a consonant and e, say its vowel as the letter's name, and name the nine common words that break the rule.

You should be able to say what the final e does, read the score of the rule off the table, sort the nine misses into three groups, and say why the same rule fails before r.

Note: Seven of the nine have an o as the vowel. Reading the misses in groups gives you more than a list: it tells you where to be careful, and it shows that the rule fails most often on one letter.