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Anonymous Posted 20 years ago
Speech & Pronunciation

write and written

0Hi there,02br
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00I am a non-native English teacher. I want to explain to my students the reasons behind the difference in pronouncing 'write' and 'written' is that 'written' has double Ts. How can I tell them about this? 02br
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00Second question: I want to tell students the correct of pronunciation of 'Donald'. It should not be pronounced as 'Do-nald'. It should be spoken as 'Don-nald' because 'n' is shared by the two vowels 'o' and 'a'. So how can I explain this in correct written and spoken English?02br
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00Newcomer0-
  

Top answer

0 01blockquote 00I want to explain to my students the reasons behind the difference in pronouncing 'write' and 'written' is that 'written' has double Ts. 12blockquote 10Whether it's written with 2 t's or 3 t's or no t's has absolutely nothing to do with why it's pronounced like that. And to properly explain the reason for that you'd have to go all the way back to Old English.

— Marvin A.

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2 Answers
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0 01blockquote
00I want to explain to my students the reasons behind the difference in pronouncing 'write' and 'written' is that 'written' has double Ts. How can I tell them about this?12blockquote
10Whether it's written with 2 t's or 3 t's or no t's has absolutely nothing to do with why it's pronounced like that. And to properly explain the reason for tha
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0 It seems to me that you are wrestling with the "Second-Letter Rule", which says that a single vowel letter (i.e., not combined with another vowel letter in a digraph) is pronounced tense if the second letter after it is another vowel letter, lax otherwise. (01i00lady, caddie, hope, hop, hoping, hopping, June, junk, bite, bit, bitty, bitten, ...02i00) Unfortunately
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