Hi everyone and welcome back to Seattle Learning Academy's American English pronunciation podcast.

My name is Mandy and this is our special 200 episode.

We have a special podcast today.

I have written a poem to help you learn all complicated spelling patterns of the long

vowel sounds. I certainly won't claim that it's a masterpiece of poetic art, but I do sincerely

hope it'll help you learn the common spelling patterns that go along with long vowel pronunciation.

Here goes. Here's a poem to help you spell

each long vowel sound. Listen closely. It's probably the most complete list around. Long vowels are

the vowels that sound like their letter name. Five letters that are vowels, five long vowel sounds just the same.

Long A, E, I, O, and U, as in cake, keep, bike, home, and cute.

Or, five more examples, break, sleep, hike, dome, and mute.

There are four common spellings for the long A. There's A consonant E as in make and cake and plate,

or A.I, as in rain and paid and bait. Then we have a Y as in say and play

and day, and finally, E-I-G-H as in 8 and sleigh and way. Long E has even more spellings to know, so close your eyes and memorize and listen to the show.

We have E as in keep and free and seem, and then EA as spelled in each and T and dream.

Peace, grieve, and achieve are all spelled I.E. consonant E.

While simply I.E. mid-word works in field and priest and briefly.

Or long E can be spelled Y at the end of a word, as in happy, Mary, and pony, and sometimes an E by

itself will do, as in she, he, we, and me.

Now two of those spellings for long E, the spellings I, E, and Y, need some special care,

though, because they also spell long eye. Yes, I.E is pronounced long I in words like

tie and pie and dye, and so is Y at the end of a word in shy and sky and dry.

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