short and long vowels in English (RP accent)

/ / Spelling: rich, sit, bit, with, fill, ship, live, give, stupid, picture, chicken, which, still , kill,
symbol, pretty, ladies, village, private,

Spellings with <i> have lexical frequency of 61%

/e / Spelling: bed, went, when, then, well, help, tell, every, never, end, next, ten, yes, step, effect ;
breath, dead, head, instead, heavy, guess, bread ; many, Thames; said, again, Leister, friend

Spellings with <e> for /e/ have lexical frequency of 96%, and with <ea> 3%

/ / Spelling: hand, lamp, marry, sat, back, family, land, man, add, ran, map, animal, matter,
pattern, language, stand, carry, fact, plan, travel, happy, natural, cat, catch, sand, flat, bad,
cattle, valley, practice, capital, gas, bank, glad, hat, value,

99% of spellings of // are with <a>

/ / Spelling: butcher, cushion, full, sugar, put, sugar, popular, regular, push, situation, bush,
bull, grateful, bullet, fluid;
book, foot, good, look, wood, wool; cook, shook, hook, brook, hood, cookie, soot, nook,;
bosom, wolf, woman; could, should, would, note: Worcester /wst/

Spellings with <u> have lexical frequency of 54%, those with <oo> : 35%

/ / Spelling: cut, dull, drug, sun, but, up, much, fun, must, such, us, under, study, number,
some, other, honey, one, front, nothing, hundred, son, come , Monday, London, above,
mother, oven, touch, country, enough, couple, young, blood, flood, does

Spellings with <u> have lexical frequency of 91%, with <o> have lexical frequency of 7%
/ / Spelling:
with <o> : dock, dog, sorry, gone, conversation, opportunity;
with <a> following /w/ : was, what, swan, want, watch, quality, quarrel, swallow, wander,
squash, wasp, yacht, wallet, warrant;
with <ou, ow> : cough, trough, Gloucester, knowledge;
with <au> : sausage, Austria, cauliflower, because;

Spellings with <o> have lexical frequency of 95%, and those with <a> 4%

/ / Spelling: it may be spelt with most vowel letters and their combinations,
Schwa / / is the most frequent English vowel; // is normal in common unstressed ( weak)
forms of words such as a, an, the, to, for, but, etc. as well as in other unstressed syllables it
can replace in those positions other short vowels, it represents the reduced or obscured
form of any vowel in unstressed position.
/i: / Spelling: tree, be, leaf, piece, receive, key, machine, each, these, see, people, three, even,
between, read, keep, sea, need, mean, eat, complete, green, feel, heat, deep, street, leave,
field, easy, least, week, region, east, free, seem, reason, speak, reach, team, meet,

64% of /i:/ occurrence is spelt as <ee> or <e>

/:/ Spelling: <er, err> in: serve, her, err, perfect, herd, verb
<ur, urr> in: turn, church, purr, nurse, burn, curve, turkey
<ir, yr> in : first, bird, sir, girl, circle, thirty
<w+or> in : world, word, work, worse

Spellings of /:/ involve a vowel letter and a following <r>

/: / Spelling:
with <a> : pass, after, bath, tomato, father, answer, rather, dance, example, sample;
With <ar> : part, car, march, far, farm, large, hard, star, garden, bar, article, card, cargo
With <ear> : heart, hearth
With <er> : clerk, Derby, sergeant
With <al> : calm, palm, half
With <au> : aunt, laugh

Spellings with <ar> have 60% lexical frequency, and those with <a> 32%

/:/ Spelling:
<ar, or> like in: war, cord, horse, story, north, born
<ore> like in: before, more, score,
<our, oar, oor> like in: four, court, board, door, floor
<au, augh, a, aw, ou> like in: cause, fault, daughter, all, talk, salt, water, saw, lawn, jaw,
awesome, bought, ought

There is no spelling of this vowel which would be predominant

/u:/ Spelling:
With <u> : June, rude, crucial, unit, numeral, rule, use, tube, include, suit
With <oo> : food, school, room, choose, soon, root, noon, cool, moon, too, spoon, roof
With <o> : do, who, move, lose, whose,
With <ou> : group, soup, through, route, youth ,
Also: <ew> chew, few, new, flew; <ue, ui, oe> blue, juice, shoe, true, fruit,

The lexical frequency of spelling with <u> is 42%; with <oo> 33%