Grammar Vowels and Consonants: Key Differences for Beginners

Daily, we pronounce various words starting with any of the six alphabets, like, a, b, c, d,...., and so on. Also, sometimes, we get confused with the usage and pronunciation of alphabets, let’s say, ‘a’. For example, car, cat, calf, cancel. Another alphabet, like “b”, has pronunciations like ball, bat, back, and so on…We see that pronunciations of the alphabet ‘a’ and ‘b’ are different, so what do these mean?

Also, alphabets are categorized into vowels and consonants. So, what are vowels and consonants? Here, we will understand vowel and consonant examples and how do they vary from each other?

The below story will help you understand consonants and vowels in English along with the vowels worksheet for UKG class.

Story of Vowel Members in an Alphabet Society

Let us recite a story to understand how many vowels and consonants are in English.

One day, a family in “Alphabet” society had five children named “a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, and “u”. These five members were very popular in society, and everybody used to love them a lot.

In this society, these members were actually “Vowel” members and they all were called by their shortened names. Out of these, Vowel “a” was active and had a short name called /a/. In English, it is also pronounced as /æ/ or /ɛɪ/.

Similarly, the vowel “e” was energetic and had a short name called /e/. Another vowel “i” was intelligent and had a short name as /i/. 

Further, the vowel “o” had a short name “/o/”. Lastly, we had another vowel “u” which was of utmost importance and had a short name “/u/”.

One day, these kids were not sleeping and they planned to play the Jump and Shout game.

One by One, Each Vowel Shouted Loudly in the Following Manner:

• a = /a/ /a/ /a/

• e = /e/ /e/ /e/

• i = /i/ /i/ /i/

• o = /o/ /o/ /o/

• u was very-very energetic and excited, so he jumped and shouted with /u/ /u/ /u/

If we ask one question how many vowel sounds in English, well, there are 5 vowel sounds in English. 

As they saw ‘u’ with enthusiasm, they all decided to play another round to see who was more energetic that night. 

These vowel members (kids) shouted out their names like /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and they slowed down as they got tired and spoke their names slowly, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/. 

So, how many vowels in English are there? Well, they are 5 in number.

Now, we will see how many constants are there in the English alphabet.

This was the time they got tired and went to sleep. Now, what happened next was, another family of constants in the “Alphabet” society saw how they could stay ahead of us? Let us start our party tonight. So, now we’ll understand what consonants are in English?

Consonants in English Alphabets with Examples

Besides five vowel members, we have a big consonant family that lives in the alphabet society. The list of consonants that we can see here are:

Now, let us pronounce these consonants:

So, this was all about vowels and consonants with some examples. Going through this will clear all your basics on this topic.