on Monday, July 18, 2011

How to say "le", when it is at the end of a word.

Do you know that the letter combination "le" occurs
very often at the end of a word.
For example,
able              apple             little            whole

Sometimes it has a separate syllable, and sometimes
it doesnt.

For example:

"ab   le" is two syllables, whoever,
"whole" is just one syllable.

Do you know when "le"  means an extra syllable?

Here is a rule to help you decide:

When the following letters come before "le",
it is not a separate syllable:

  a i l o s u


What this means is that "whole" does not have a separate
syllable because "o" comes before "le" in "whOle",
also "file" and "mile" are one syllable words,
because in these words, "i" comes before "le".

Here are some more examples:

Two syllables (a i l o s u do not come beforehand)
bub ble               ca ble                 a ble           cir cle


One syllable
male                    while                  pole


If you learn this rule, you will know how to pronounce
many common words in English, and also many uncommon
ones also. However there are some words that do not
follow this rule. To be sure that you get these words right,
you will need to learn them.

Here they are:

finale           said              fi na le
facsimile      said              fac si mi le
simile          said              si mi le


All the best with your English learning,

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts