au in British English
Here, we will discuss the multigraph 'au'. It's amazing how far you've come, you know. It's good that you've built up a great learning habit.
'au' as a digraph has five sounds that we are going to talk about here.
Digraphs are a set of two letters that stand together and produce a new sound.
Digraph | au |
---|---|
Name | au (pronounced /ˈeɪ ˈyou/) |
Sound(s) | /ɔː/, /ɒ/, /a:/, /u:/, /əʊ/ |
The Digraph 'au'
Sound 1: /ɔː/
'au' always comes at the beginning or in the middle of words and it sounds /ɔː/:
s
l
Sound 2: /ɒ/
'au' also sounds /ɒ/ in the middle or at the beginning of a word:
bec
s
Sound 3: /a:/
'au' can stand in the middle or at the beginning of a word and sounds /a:/:
l
Sound 4: /u:/
'au' in the middle of words sounds /u:/:
be
be
Sound 5: /əʊ/
'au' sounds /əʊ/ in French loanwords:
m