The Vocalic Ambinyms: Pronouncing Ay as /e/, Ee as /i/ and I as /aɪ/ but Oh as /o/ and Yue as /ju/

The pronunciation and spelling of English vowels is mercurial. This chapter focuses on the behavior of our vowel letters by concentrating three spotlights from three directions: (i) the names associated with these alphabetic letters, (ii) the phonetic notation associated with their prototypical values and (iii) the various letters and combinations used to spell these values. Why, for instance, is the letter name Ay counterintuitively transcribable with the phonetic symbol /e/ (and Ee as /i/ and I as /aɪ/) when Oh and Yue are transcribable with the self-matching vowel symbols /o/ and /ju/? Why this “tautographic” discrepancy? Or consider this pattern: If the vowel spelled in meet and meat is, with the help of a word-final, silent -e, the same vowel spelled in mete, and the vowel spelled in load matches the same vowel, again with the help of a word-final, silent -e, in lode, why doesn’t the in bloody, good, food or floor match the vowel in load and lode? Typical of this book’s approach, a few key metalinguistic observations are used to unlock a chain reaction of interrelated phonological and orthographic details which yield illuminating if intricate explanations governing some of the regularities and peculiarities of English vowels.