In this post I want to help you with the “ei” spelling. I’m going to give you a list of words with ei spelling grouped together into different sound groups.

At the bottom of the post you’ll find a link to a video quiz to test how many of these words with “ei” you can confidently pronounce.

• With the FACE vowel /eɪ/ (like make, day, wait)

Weight, weigh, eight, veil, vein, rein, beige, feint, abseil, reign, neighbour, spontaneity 

• With the PRICE vowel /aɪ/ (like my, why, island)

Height, feisty, neither/either, heist, kaleidoscope, eider

• With the FLEECE vowel /iː/ (like sheep, me, people)

Ceiling, seize, caffeine, neither/either, protein, conceive, receive, 

• With the KIT vowel / ɪ/ (like sing, bit, England)

Forfeit, counterfeit, surfeit, sovereign, sovereignty, 

• With the DRESS vowel /e/ (like egg, help, head) 

Leisure, Leicester, heifer, 

• With the NEAR vowel /ɪə/ (like hear, appear, beer)

Weird, weir, 

• With the SQUARE vowel /e:/ (like care, wear, area)

Their, heir, 

• Unstressed

Foreign

Now watch this video to test how much you know about how to pronounce “ei” in British English:

The pronunciations are in the video and the transcriptions are here too:

weight – /weɪt/
seize – /siːz/
forfeit – /ˈfɔː.fɪt/
leisure – /ˈleʒ.ər/
weird – /wɪəd
their – /ðe:/

How many did you get right? Let me know!

In modern British English there are five – yes FIVE – ways we pronounce “OO”. There’s no logic behind why some words have one pronunciation while others have a different one. As a learner of English pronunciation you will need to learn these different pronunciations by heart.

I live in Yorkshire and in my accent (and many other northern British English accents) there are only (only!) four ways to pronounce “OO”. This is because the vowel in “flood” and “blood” does not exist in most northern accents. Instead, we pronounce these words with the same vowel as “good” and “look”.

There are two main ways to pronounce “OO” though – these are with the long GOOSE vowel /uː/ or the short FOOT vowel /ʊ/.

Words with the long GOOSE vowel and “OO” spelling include:

/uː/ : food, moon, soon, spook, smooth, loose, choose etc

Words with the short FOOT vowel include:

/ʊ/ : good, wool, stood, wood, cook, look, etc

I frequently hear students who are learning English pronounce some of these words with the FOOT vowel /ʊ/ with the long vowel of GOOSE. If you are learning a Standard British Accent you will need to be careful here. For example, I often hear students use the same vowel in “good food” but the correct pronunciation in Standard British English is /ɡʊd fuːd/.

There are also three other, less common, ways to pronounce “OO”,

Some words use the long vowel found in THOUGHT, NORTH or FORCE /ɔː/ for example
floor, poor, moor, door, etc

There are a pair of words with the short STRUT vowel /ʌ/, these are  
flood, blood

And finally there is one word that uses the GOAT vowel /əʊ/:

Brooch

In this video I will show you how to pronounce the sounds and I will also test how well you know which words use which vowel.

This sentence will help you remember the main four ways to pronounce “OO”:

The poor cook flooded the floor.

I hope that was helpful. Let me know what other spellings you find difficult to confidently pronounce.