The word alphabet comes from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet. The English alphabet is a bicameral, that is it has upper case (or capitals):Ī B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZĪ b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Etymologies Think of the different pronunciations of the letter c as in cake and nice. Think of the /k/ sound in case and the same sound in Kate. This means in English different letters often have different sounds and, likewise, sometimes the same sound has different letters representing it: When we write them, however, some words do not have one of the vowels above, such as:Īlthough these words have a vowel sound, they use the consonant letter y instead of a vowel.Ī very few words contain all five vowels in alphabetical order:Īlthough there are 26 letters in the alphabet there are roughly 40 different sounds. The consonants are: b,c,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,t,v,w,x,y,zĮvery word has at least one vowel sound.
These can be divided into vowels and consonants.
The English Alphabet contains 26 letters.