American English Phonetics

1.3.2 Spelling pronunciation – inconsistencies

Consider the following words:

Now compare:

In the first set one and the same vowel is represented differently in each word, while in the second set the vowels are all different in spite of the fact that the letter o is used in all of them.

A pronunciation that is based on the spelling is known as a spelling pronunciation. Sometimes the spelling pronunciation becomes the accepted pronunciation, as is the case with hotel in both Dutch and English, in which word no h was pronounced at the time it was borrowed from French.