7 Phonics Diphthongs A1

7. Phonics Diphthongs A1 / eɪ / Diphthongs A1 introduces the glide of the phoneme /e/ to /ɪ/ to form the diphthong /eɪ/ which is usually associated with the letter clusters “ace, ade, afe, age, ail, ain, ake, ale, ame, ane, ape, ase, aste, ate ave, ay,…” It has the same speech sound as the letter “A”. The awareness of the letter clusters learners is helpful, especially for small children in the learning of spelling of words and their pronunciation. For the phoneme / eɪ /, the regular spelling of the words is usually “a-e” though the speech sound / eɪ / also occur in the letter clusters “eight” as in the words “weigh, weight, freight,…” and “ay” as in the words like “bay, clay, day, may, play, pray,… ” The letter cluster “ail” as in the words like “bail, fail, mail, nail, pail, sail, tail, wail,…” The letter cluster “ain” as in the words like “rain, brain, drain, train, sprain, strain, ” The other two diphthongs gliding to / ɪ / are / ɔɪ / and / aɪ / and will be presented in another video – Diphthong A2. There are five other Diphthongs. The three phonemes / ɪ /, / e / and / ʊ / glide to /ə/ to form the diphthongs / ɪə /, /eə/ and /ʊə/. They will be presented in the video – Diphthongs B The two phonemes / ə / and / a / glide to / ʊ / to form the diphthongs / əʊ / and / aʊ / and will be presented in the video – Diphthongs C. There are eight diphthongs altogether in the central phonemes of / ɪ /, / ə / or / ʊ /.