Learn English Consonants and Vowels | Basic English Grammar Course

Hi, everybody and welcome to this video.

Now in this video, I want to talk about the difference between consonants and vowels.

Now, in the English alphabet, there are twenty-six letters.

And in the alphabet, there are five main vowels and one special vowel.

And the rest are consonants.

So, let’s look at the board.

Here’s the alphabet.

The first letter, ‘a’, is a vowel.

The next letter, ‘b’, is a consonant.

‘c’ is a consonant.

‘d’ consonant.

‘e’ is a vowel.

Then, ‘f’, is a consonant.

‘g’ consonant.

‘h’ consonant.

‘i’ is another vowel.

‘j’ is a consonant.

‘k’ consonant.

‘l’, ‘m’, ‘n’ are consonants.

‘o’ is another vowel.

‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ’s’ and ‘t’, these are all consonants.

‘u’ is the last main vowel.

‘v’ consonant.

‘w’ consonant.

‘x’ consonant.

‘y’ is the special vowel.

And we’ll talk about that more later on.

And ‘z’ is the last letter, and it is a consonant.

Okay, so, there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet.

There are five main vowels.

One special vowel.

And the rest are consonant.

Okay, let’s move on to the next part.

Let’s look at some words.

Now all English words have vowels.

Maybe one or many vowels.

So, let’s look at these words.

The first word is “cat”.

Okay, we have ‘c’ is a consonant.

‘a’ a vowel.

‘t’ consonant.

“Egg”.

‘e’ is a vowel.

And ‘g’, ‘g’.

‘g’ is a consonant.

“Hit”.

‘h’ is a consonant.

‘i’ a vowel.

And ‘t’ a consonant.

“Top”.

‘t’ is a consonant.

‘o’ is a vowel.

And ‘p’ a consonant.

The last word is “cut”.

‘c’ is a consonant.

‘u’ a vowel.

And ‘t’ a consonant.

So, we have the main vowels: ‘a’, ’e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’.

Now, I said ‘y’ is a special vowel.

That’s because sometimes it’s a vowel and sometimes it’s a consonant.

So, let’s look.

In the word, “why”,

the letter ‘y’ sounds like ‘i’.

“Why”.

So, it is a vowel.

“Bicycle”.

The letter ‘y’ sounds like ‘i’.

“Bicycle”.

‘i’ is the letter ‘i’, right, it sounds like the letter ‘i’.

So, in this case ‘y’ is also a vowel.

“Pretty”.

“Pretty”.

‘y’ sounds like ‘e’.

Okay…

“Pretty”.

So, it’s a vowel.

Now, in the last two words,

“you” and “yes”, the letter ‘y’ is a consonant.

Usually, if ‘y’ comes at the beginning of a word,

or if it makes a /u/ sound,

for example, “you”, “yes”,

it is a consonant. Okay…

So again, five main vowels: ‘a’, ’e’, ’i’, ’o’, ’u’.

And ‘y’ the special vowel.

Now to help us remember vowels, we can say, “a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y.”

Okay, repeat again after me.

“a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y.”

One more time, faster.

“a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y.”

Okay, and that’s the end of this video. Thank you.