LETTER TEAMS

40 letter combinations and the sounds they spell, in IPA, with one example word each

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Formats: A4 · A3 · A2
What you get: Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject: language · school · reference · classroom

Sounds are General American in learner-dictionary notation (Oxford Learner’s, NAmE): length is marked with ː, r-coloured vowels are written as vowel plus r. A tinted card means the team spells a second sound elsewhere on the sheet (th, ea, ow, oo). In the silent-e group the blank stands for any single consonant. Checked 2026-08-13.

GH IS THE TOMBSTONE OF A LOST SOUND

In Middle English gh spelled /x/ — the throaty sound still heard in Scottish loch. English lost that sound, and in every word it went its own way: in tough and cough it hardened into /f/; in though, through and bought it fell silent.

That is why ough now reads six different ways: the spelling records how words sounded seven centuries ago, while the sounds moved on. The six words at the top of this sheet are six different fates of the same four letters.

On the sheet

Sounds are General American in learner-dictionary notation (Oxford Learner’s, NAmE): length is marked with ː, r-coloured vowels are written as vowel plus r. A tinted card means the team spells a second sound elsewhere on the sheet (th, ea, ow, oo). In the silent-e group the blank stands for any single consonant. Checked 2026-08-13.
Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 12 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

LETTER TEAMS

GH IS THE TOMBSTONE OF A LOST SOUND

On the sheet

Printing

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