The words that contain a pattern of some combined letters like -eigh- often produce a long vowel sound of ‘a’. Two vowels e and i comes next to each other and combine with two consonants i.e. g and h to make a new sound. This pattern of English alphabets contains a digraph gh at the end.
A digraph is a combination of two consonant speech sounds that blend to give one single sound. There are many letter patterns in which the digraph gh is used such as -ough-, -igh-, -augh- etc. The one pattern we’re discussing today i.e. eigh also belongs to the patterns of digraph gh.
In most of the words including this pattern, the digraph gh remains silent and makes no sound. However, the vowels (e, i) merge with each other and give a speech sound like ‘ay’ or you can say it a long ‘a’ sound as mentioned earlier. Remember this general rule while pronouncing these types of words. However, exceptions are always there.
EIGH Words for Kids
Following are some common examples of eigh phonics words:
heighten | eight | neighbor | eighteen |
neighing | weigh | freight | overweight |
makeweight | neigh | height | overweighing |
freighter | heigh | weight | airfreight |
Low height | sleigh | weighed | Ocean freight |
Upper height | eighty | inveigh | neighborhood |
underweight | eighth | reweigh | neighboring |
Let us examine the sound produced by some eigh phonics words.
- eight
While pronouncing the word eight, -eigh- gives a long vowel sound of ‘a’ just like ‘ay’. The digraph gh doesn’t make any sound and appears as silent.
- sleigh
This is the exception we were talking about in the earlier section. In sleigh, ‘ei’ gives the sound of ‘i’ whereas ‘gh’ makes no sound and remains silent.
- neighbor
As in most words, a long vowel sound of ‘a’ just like ‘ay’ is generated by -eigh- in the word neighbor.
- weigh
-eigh- in weigh gives a vowel sound of ‘a’ such as ‘ay’ just like other words having this letter pattern.
- neigh
Just like most of the words, we pronounce -eigh- in neigh as a vowel sound of ‘a’ i.e. ‘ay’. The digraph gh remains silent in pronunciation of neigh.
- freight
The combination of e and i gives the vowel sound ‘ay’ and the digraph behaves as silent in freight.
- height
There is an exception here in the general rule of pronouncing -eigh- as a long ‘a’ sound. In this scenario, ‘ei’ gives the sound like ‘i’ and the digraph remains silent.
We will make this eigh phonics learning a little more interesting by using the following exercise:
Name:_____________ Date:________
Fill in the blanks
- A horse says________________________
- Nine comes after_____________________
- I lift__________s to build muscles
- A scale shows how much you___________
- Stretch yourself to gain______________
- I am____________for this game
- My_____________are very good
- I have___________cards in my bag
| height | neigh | eighteen | overweight |
| eight | weigh | neighbor | weight |
Keep explore EnglishBix to find phonics worksheets to practice “eigh” words.