EA
Shedding a tear; tearing to shreds
Ea is a fickle vowel combination.
Some vowel sounds are made by two vowels working together. For people new to reading english, the vowels E and A, when used together, can present a challenge. There is no rule that describes the sound formed and this combination forms many different sounds. Even more challenging, two EA words spelled exactly the same may take on different pronunciations and different meanings in a sentence. Oh dear. Example:
- Her tears (noun) roll down her cheeks. I hear her crying.
- He tears (verb) the letter and tosses it away without a care.
You must memorize the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning, of EA words.
Summary of all the EA sounds:
| , as in | , ,.
Some verbs, like 'to read', in the past tense are pronounced with a short e sound. For example: He read the book yesterday. |
| , as in | , , .
Some verbs, like 'to read', in the present tense are pronounced with a long e sound. For example: He can read the book. |
| , as in | . |
| , as in | , , . |
| , as in | , . |
| , as in | , . |
Popup the .
You must sometimes examine the context of the word in the sentence to know how to voice an EA word.
Examples:
- Lead rhymes with bed: Professor Plum did it in the library with the lead pipe.
- Lead rhymes with need: The alpha wolf leads the pack.
- Read rhymes with bed: I read the book yesterday.
- Read rhymes with need: I can read the news later.
- Hear rhymes with ear but heart rhymes with art and heard sounds like herd.
- Tear rhymes with ear and means: a drop of clear fluid in the eye. She shed a tear.
- Tear rhymes with care and means: pull apart; rend. We tear the paper to shreds.
Text to voice applications often get the pronunciation of words like tear wrong because words are voiced without examining context.