l as in lot

ll as in bell

le as in bottle

lle as in grille

gl as in imbroglio

sl as in island

sle as in isle

hl as in kohl

4 thoughts on “l

    1. alison Post author

      Hi Rose, this is a tricky question because the sound /l/ can act as a syllable in words where it follows an alveolar stop (/t/ or /d/) e.g. rattle, bottle, paddle, peddle etc, we don’t bother saying a vowel, just go straight to the /l/. Of course some words like this are spelt as in petal, metal, pistol, etc, and teaching kids the difference between the ‘le’, ‘al’, ‘el’, ‘il’ and ‘ol’ spellings that don’t have a vowel pronounced and those that do is kind of diminishing marginal utility. I tend to nowadays teach final syllable ‘le’ words first and tell kids to just say /l/ for them (even if they do have an unstressed vowel in normal speech) and then later on ask kids to over-pronounce the other spellings to include the ‘short’ vowel most commonly represented by that vowel letter. Hope that makes sense, All the best, Alison

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