THE UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE I FACULTY OF SCIENCE

DEPARTMENT OF ICT4D THE LANGUAGE LABORATORY

ENGL 104 2ND SEMESTER 2019/2020 ACADEMIC YEAR

LESSON 1
A- THE ENGLISH ALPHABET.
The English alphabet is made up of 26 letters divided into consonants and vowels. Consonants
and vowels are used to build the different words that are used in English. This means that there
is no word that is made up of only consonants and there is also no word that is made up of only
vowels.
i- Consonants: there are 21 consonants out of the 26 letters that make up the English
alphabet. The consonants aare; B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y,
Z.
Each consonant has its pronunciation but when put together can produce another sound or
pronunciation and we call it consonant blend e.g of some consonant blends

cl cr br bl pr pl sw str fl Dr
Clean Creep Bring Bling Pray Ply Swing String Flow Drug
Cling Crown Bright Blow Poud Plane Swim Stress Flower Dry
class crow break black praise plate swear struggle fly drip
Wh Ph th spr Ch /k/ ch sh scr tr gr
When Philosophy This Spring Choir Church Shame Screen Tray Green
Whether Philanthropist There Sprinkle Choral Chalk Shoe Scramble Trip Grape
they spray chemist change show scrawl train grind

ii- Vowels: in the 26 letters of the alphabet, we have just 5 vowels which include A, E, I,
O, U. Each vowel has its own sound which is known as short vowel sound but when
vowels are put together they form another sound and we call that long vowel sound.
Examples of words with short vowel sounds include;
/e/ /a/ /o/ /i/ /u/
Pen Pan Pot Pin Cup
Leg Cat Hot Ink Dug
Set Bag Log Sin Mug
Get Mat Cot Tin Tug
Let Sat Dot Dig Pluck
jet hat got bin
 Examples of long or double vowel words include;
ea ee oo ou Oa
Eat Three Book House Coat
Meat Tree Cook Blouse Boat
Tea See Took Mouse Load
Seat Heel Look Sound Loaf
Sea Meet Brool Found Oak
beat bee school loud

B- PHONEMES AND MORPHEMES

i- Phonemes: phonemes are the smallest unit of speech that can be used to make one
word different from another word. It is therefore a sound of a letter or letters that
make it different from others. E:g “c” and “b” are different phonemes in the words
cat and bat. It therefore mean a phoneme is a unit of sound in a word. It doesn’t have
any inherent meaning by itself but when you put them together they can make words
that make meaning
Sometimes there are more than one way to pronounce a phoneme e.g the consonant
blend of “ch” can have different pronunciations like in the words below
Choir /k/------------a group of singers
Cheese /tch/--------something that we eat
Chalk /sh/---------- we use to write on the board
The different pronunciation of a phoneme is known as allophone. Which means that
the phoneme “ch” above three different allophones.
The two main categories of phonemes are vowels and consonants.
ii- Morphemes: it is the smallest bit of language that has its own meaning either as a
word or part of a word e.g the word “worker” contains two morphemes which are;
work----an action er-------which adds to work and gives it another meaning
Tourists: tour is one morpheme which is the root word ist-----somebody that does
something.
Morphemes are divided into two i.e free morphemes and bound morphemes.
 Free morphemes: these are morphemes that can stand by themselves as
words e.g boy, girl house, table etc. free morphemes consist of two kinds ie
Content words and words that have no content
 Bound morphemes: they are morphemes that can not stand alone burt can
only make sense or meaning when attached to other words. They can either
be affixes or suffixes. Words to which the bound morpheme is attached to
make sense is called the stem or root word e.g “undressed”
Dress is the root word while un and ed are the bound morphemes
C- WORD FORMATION:
Words are formed in English either through inflection, affixation compounding and
conversion.
 Inflection: it is the adding of letters to words no to change the meaning but to give
it a different form e.g
Write ----writing----written-----wrote
Table-----tables
Beauty-----beautiful----beautifully

 Affixation: they include prefix and suffix. A prefix is a letter or group of letters
added to the beginning of a word to make a new word e.g
Comfortable-------uncomfortable
Important-------unimportant
Respect ---------disrespect
A suffix on the otherhand is a letter or group of letters added at the end of a word
to make a new word e.g
Beautiful------------beautifully
Respect-------------respectful
Nice----------------nicely
 Compounding: a compound word is the combination of two independent words
with different meaning to form another word with a different meaning e.g
Black + board = blackboard
Foot + ball = football
Tooth + brush =toothbrush
 Conversion: this is the process where an existing word remains the same with no
affixation but the meaning changes e.g the word “can”
This same word is a modal verb like; I can swim
It can also mean a noun like; I need a can drink.

THINGS TO NOTE
 Our first lesson we looked at the English alphabet, phonemes and morphemes,
word formation
 The English alphabet is made up of 26 letters with 21 consonants and 5 vowels.
 Consonants and vowels are joined to form words
 Each letter has its sound but when they are grouped together to form one sound
we can have consonant blends while we also have short and long vowel sounds
 Phonemes are the various sound that a letter or group of letters can give to make
it different from others
 Morphemes are group of letters put together or added to a word to make
meanings
 Word formation is by forming different words either through inflection, affixation,
compounding or conversion.
 Inflection is when the form of the word changes without changing its principal
meaning
 Affixation is either by adding a word or group of words in front of another word
which is known as prefix or adding at the end of a word which is known as suffix.
 Compounding is by joining two independent words to form another independent
word
 Conversion is when a word remains the same but meaning changes in context.