Do you remember how you first learned to read and write? You learned the types of sounds that letters made, particularly how when you combined certain letters together, they made certain sounds (such as that when 'p' and 'h' are combined that make a sound that is different than the two sounds separately). But in this process of learning to read and write, you probably also quickly discovered that there are some sounds in English that break the rules and can be quite confusing.
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When you were first learning what types of sounds letters made, you were using phonology. Phonology is the sound structure of a word. When you are first learning to read, you learn that each vowel usually makes a certain sound and that each consonant usually makes a certain sound. Words that follow the normal patterns of sound structure are regular words, while irregular words are more difficult to learn to decode. Let's take a look at some examples of regular and irregular words.
Regular words are words that you read by using common letters sounds. When learning about the letter 'A' in school, you learn that it often makes the sound that is in words like flag, snap, last, pant, grass, sand, and camp. These words all use the same 'A' sound.
You also learn the same thing about 'E' in words like best, sent, help, next, and bent or 'I' in trick, swim, trip, cliff, shift, and twin. 'O' often makes the sound found in words like frog, cross, drop, slob, or soggy. 'U' commonly makes the sound found in the words stump, skunk, trunk, blunt, or crust.
Irregular words are words that have unique letter sounds that are not very common. You have to memorize the way these words are said because they do not conform to the normal conventions of letters sounds in English.
Unfortunately for those learning to read and write in English, some of the most commonly used words in English are irregular words. 'You' is an irregular word because 'ou' does not usually make an 'oo' sound in English. Another commonly used word that is an irregular word is 'the'. In most words that begin with a consonant and are followed by the letter 'e', an 'ee' sound is made, but 'the' does not make that sound. The word 'do' is also an irregular word because normally, a word with a consonant and an 'o' does not make an 'oo' sound.
It is not just for unusual sound structures with vowels that create irregular words. You can also have strange consonant sound combinations such as in 'cough' where the 'gh' makes an 'f' sound. Also, consider the word 'know' which has a silent 'k'.
Now that you know what irregular and regular words are, how do you know if a word is irregular or regular? To do that, you would need to know about sounds in the English language and how they are generally presented by letters. Words that contain these common representations of the sounds are regular words. Those that do not are irregular words.
This lesson has discussed how we use phonology, or the sound structure of words when we are first learning to read and write them. Of these sound structures of words, regular words are those that use common sound structures in words and irregular words are those that use uncommon sound structures in words.
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Educational Psychology: Help and Review10 chapters | 355 lessons
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