The English alphabet: A complete guide for beginners

The modern English alphabet contains 26 letters, each with an uppercase (capital) and lowercase (small) form. It includes five vowels and 21 consonants. Every English word is made up of these 26 letters. The alphabet is based on the Latin script, like many other languages, including Spanish, German, Polish, and Malay. 

In this article, we’ll take a close look at the alphabet’s sounds and silent letters, discover some letters that don’t exist in English anymore, and take a look at how the English alphabet developed.

• How many letters are in the English alphabet?
• How to pronounce the English alphabet
• Where did the English alphabet come from? A short history
• Fun facts about the English alphabet
• FAQs

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How many letters are in the English alphabet?

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. Each has an uppercase and a lowercase form. 

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

a

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

n

o

p

q

r

s

t

u

v

w

x

y

z

Capital vs. lowercase letters

We use lowercase letters much more often than uppercase ones in English. Uppercase letters appear:

• At the start of sentences
• The door is open. 
• For proper nouns (specific names of people, places, things)
• People: Ben, Alice
• Places: New York, the Nile 
• Brands and Companies: Adidas, Lingoda
• Days and Months: Monday, August
• Languages and Nationalities: English, Japanese
• For the pronoun I (regardless of its position in a sentence)
• No, I’m not coming. 
• In acronyms and initialisms
• BBC, NASA
• For movie, book, and song titles, etc. (often following title case)
• The Lord of the Rings, Like a Rolling Stone

Vowels and consonants: What’s the difference?

There are five vowels in English: a, e, i, o, u. All of the other 21 letters are consonants. But there are far more vowel sounds than there are letters: English has 20 vowel sounds! 

These fall into two categories: 

• Monophthongs - single, pure vowel sounds like the /ɪ/ in ‘sit’.
• Diphthongs -  two vowel sounds blended together, like the /eɪ/ in ‘train’. 

There are 24 consonant sounds, and we typically divide them into voiced and unvoiced. 

• Voiced - you’ll feel vibration in your throat when making these sounds, as with the /b/ in ‘bat’.
• Unvoiced - no throat vibration as with the /p/ in ‘pat’.

Certain consonant sounds are made of two letters combined, like the /ʃ/ at the beginning of ‘sheep’.  

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How to pronounce the English alphabet

The most common English vowel sounds

Distinguishing between vowel sounds can be challenging for English learners, particularly when it comes to long vs. short vowels. Short vowels are like the /æ/ in ‘cat’ or the /ɛ/ in ‘bed’, and longer vowel sounds are like the /eɪ/ in ‘cake’ and the /iː/ in ‘bead’. Words with long vowel sounds tend to have two vowels next to each other, like in bEAd, or a vowel + consonant + vowel pattern, like in cAkE. 

The hard and soft consonants

C and G can have hard or soft sounds depending on the letters that follow them. They often have a soft sound before E, I, or Y (though there are many exceptions). 

C

The hard C is pronounced /k/, as in ‘cat’ /kæt/. The soft C is pronounced /s/, as in ‘city’ /ˈsɪti/. 

G

The hard G is pronounced /g/, as in ‘goat’ /ɡəʊt/. The soft G is pronounced /dʒ/ as in ‘giraffe’ /dʒəˈrɑːf/. 

Tricky sounds for non-native speakers

Certain sounds are tricky for non-native speakers, usually because they don’t exist or aren’t clearly distinguished in their first language. Here are some examples: 

• TH sounds: /θ/ as in ‘think’ and /ð/ as in ‘this’ can be difficult for many learners. Some substitute /s/, /z/, or /d/ sounds instead.
• L vs. R: Some learners of an East Asian background may struggle to distinguish between /l/ and /r/ as in the words ‘light’ and ‘right’ because their native language may not separate these sounds clearly.
• P vs. B: In languages like Arabic, /p/ doesn’t exist, so it’s often replaced with /b/. (Pepsi becomes Bebsi.)
• British vs. American R: In American English, R is pronounced almost everywhere. In British English, it’s only pronounced when it comes before a vowel. This can affect understanding — for example, ‘court’ and ‘caught’ sound the same in many British accents. 

Learning English with Lingoda’s native-speaking teachers can help you become familiar with regional differences and enable you to work on pronouncing challenging sounds. 

Silent letters and unpredictable sounds

Many letters in the English alphabet can be silent, which can make it difficult for learners to guess their pronunciation. Learning the phonetic alphabet can really help! Here are a few examples of silent letters in English. 

• B: lamb, debt
• G: gnome, sign, foreign
• H: hour, honest
• K: knife, know
• L: walk, talk
• P: psychology, receipt
• W: write, who

Why are they silent? In many cases, the letters used to be pronounced, like the K in ‘knife’ and the W in ‘write’. In others, they were added later for etymological reasons — for example, the B in ‘’debt’ reflects the Latin root debitum. Words like ‘psychology’ borrow combinations from Greek that are rare in English, such as PS.

To make things more complex, some letter combinations have multiple pronunciations: 

• GH can be silent, as in ‘light’, pronounced /f/, as in ‘laugh’, or pronounced /g/, as in ‘ghost’.
• OUGH is the ultimate nightmare, with no fewer than nine different pronunciations!  

American vs. British pronunciation

American English and British English speakers pronounce the alphabet in almost the same way. Z and, to some extent, R are exceptions. 

	American English	British English
Z	zee /ziː/	zed /zed/
R	/ɑːr/	/ɑː/

Where did the English alphabet come from? A short history

The English alphabet has its roots in the Latin alphabet, which arrived in Britain with the Romans. However, the alphabet wasn’t used to write in English until around the 7th century. It also contained certain extra letters to reflect English sounds, including þ (thorn), ð (eth), and æ (ash). These gradually disappeared after the Norman Conquest in 1066, when French spelling conventions began to reshape English. Although these characters are no longer part of the modern alphabet, they still appear in historical texts and studies of Old English.

The lost letters of English

Texts written in Old English will contain several letters that aren’t used in modern English: 

• Thorn (Þ): This represented the voiced and unvoiced TH sound in words like thing and the.
• Eth (Ð): This letter also represented the TH sounds in Old English. 
• Wynn (ƿ): The Latin alphabet didn’t contain the letter W, so it was represented with ƿ instead. 
• Ash (Æ): Æ was used for the short A sound we have in words like cat. 

Fun facts about the English alphabet

• The most common letter in English is E. It appears in around 12% of words. 
• The least common letter is Z. It appears in just 0.07% of words. 
• Q is almost always followed by U, like in ‘queen’ and ‘quick’. Exceptions, like ‘Qatar’, are borrowed from other languages. 
• W is the only letter pronounced with more than one syllable: double u. 
• The Old English letter Þ was written as Y when the printing press was introduced. This has led to people believing ‘the’ was originally pronounced ‘ye’, as in Ye Olde Shoppe. 

How many letters are in the English alphabet?

There are 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, from A to Z.

Are there any letters that were removed from the English alphabet?

Yes, Old English once included letters like þ (thorn) and ð (eth), which are no longer used today.

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