OTHER VOWEL PHONEMES include medial vowels, vowel digraphs, vowel diphthongs, r-controlled vowels, schwa, and y as a vowel.

MEDIAL VOWELS, sometimes called "broad vowels," are neither short nor long.
These phonemes have the sound of the vowel in words like father, ball, shawl, and odd.

Medial vowels are difficult to describe because of the way people speak. Some people pronounce the vowels in odd and father exactly the same. For others, the pronunciation is very different.

ai in train

ea in beat

ie in tie

oa in soap

eu in feud

VOWEL DIPHTHONGS are two vowel letters that together represent a "blended" vowel sound. Vowel diphthongs include letter combinations such as

oi in boil

oy in boy

ou in shout

ow in how

Diphthongs are sometimes called "vowel blends." The sounds are closely associated and connected, but one can hear a "slide" between the two sounds.

R-CONTROLLED VOWELS (vowels followed by the letter r) have a unique sound:

arm

germ

girl

cork

turn

Vowels followed by the letter r have neither a long nor short sound.

SCHWA is a vowel sound that occurs only in unaccented syllables. It is represented by the symbol <a onClick="window.open('/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=gif::::/sites/dl/free/0073131245/371461/schwa.gif','popWin', 'width=71,height=84,resizable,scrollbars');" href="#"><img valign="absmiddle" height="16" width="16" border="0" src="/olcweb/styles/shared/linkicons/image.gif"> (0.0K)</a> and occurs only in unaccented syllables.

The schwa phoneme can be represented by all five vowel letters.

EXAMPLE: around, children, pencil, button, circus

WHEN IS Y A VOWEL? Children learn that the vowels are a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. The letter y represents a vowel phoneme when it is the only letter used to represent the vowel sound in a word or syllable: by, myth, quickly.

EXAMPLE:	Y represents the long i sound at the end of a one-syllable word: cry.
	Y represents the long i sound at the end of a syllable within a multisyllable word: cycle.
	Y represents the long e sound at the end of a multisyllable word: funny.
	Y represents the short i sound inside a single syllable word: cyst.

The letter y is also considered a vowel when it follows another vowel in words like toy and soy. Similarly, when the letter w follows a vowel, it combines with the vowel sound in words like cow and now. That's why some phonics programs consider the letter w a vowel. When they follow vowels, y and w "keep the vowel sound going."

*Note: That's why these phonemes were not listed as final sounds in the chart of consonant phonemes.

The VOWEL PHONEME SYSTEM of English is complex. Sometimes, letters and letter combinations represent different sounds.

EXAMPLE:	The letter o represents different sounds in do, no, one, and wolf.
	The digraph ea represents different sounds in bead and head.

The same sound can be represented by several different letters and letter combinations, and the same vowel phoneme can be represented in different ways.

EXAMPLE:    moon, tune, blue, drew, fruit, shoe, and two

That's why readers and writers need to draw upon their knowledge of language in learning to decode and encode words.