Beware of English spelling
I want to warn all of you about variations in pronunciation in English. After all, maybe if you are aware of these changes you may not make so many mistakes. The hard part is that I can warn you, scare you, prepare you and what happens? Maybe you are aware of the variations and are careful, and want to learn the patterns. Unfortunately you may find that there are no patterns, just an absence of patterns.
Believe me, the letter “e” could also be called the letter “eh” or the letter “uh” or the letter “nothing”. Better not to have preconceived ideas about how to pronounce “e”, whether you like it or not.
Seeing is believing is a frequently heard expression.What did I hear? Are “e” and “a” , when combined together in a word, pronounced like “see”? No, you heard wrong, or read wrong.
I regret to tell you that “e” can combine with “a” to sound like “her” or “heard” but then there are other ways to write this sound, like “bird”, or “word” or “squirrel” or “heard”. You will learn that there are many words with the same sound, written in different ways, to confuse you further.
I also regret to tell you that “e” and “a” together can also be read like bread, or head. Yes, that's what I just said. While on the subject of bread, you need to knead the dough in order to make bread, you know.
While on the subject of you or “ou”, you wouldn't be able to get out to travel about without going through the door. Although I have heard of people going through the window. That could be a tougher or even rougher way to go unless there happens to be a tree branch or bough handy to grab on to. Speaking of the window, as I look outside I see the plowman in his field, but he isn't plowing with his plough, he is just sowing the field while his wife is at home sewing him a shirt. His field will be sown by him, and his shirt will be sewn by his wife.
You probably want to be confident you know how each word is spoken. Unfortunately there are lots of words or word forms or phonemes which contain different vowels, pronounced in different ways, so that you easily get confused and get tied in a knot. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
I'm going to stop now and just tell you to focus on listening. Don't rely on how words are written or spelled. Just get used to the words, hear the words, learn the words, learn what they mean and learn how they are pronounced. If you meet a new word you may not know how to pronounce it, but that's OK. If you keep reading, listening and meeting new words, you will eventually get to know them. Make friends with the words and don't worry about mistakes. You'll gradually pronounce them better and better. You can't rely on how they are written.
