Short and Long U Vowel Sound Words List

In English grammar, we are well aware of the 26 alphabets out of which 5 are vowels and rest are consonants. Each vowel is pronounced in a unique way which gives rise to different sounds. Today we’ll discuss about vowel ‘u’ and it’s usage in words.

This ESL phonics extensive list introduces students to the more than 50 plus “short u” and “long u” sound words.

Short ‘u’ Vowel Sound Words

The short U sound is what you hear when you pronounce words like “cup” or “jug.”

Here are some examples of words with the short U sound.

You would also observe some patterns of words being followed. Notice that there are some short u cvc words in the above list.

Having looked at words which use short u sound. Let’s look at some words which are pronounced with much more stress on vowel u.

4 Ways to Spell Long ‘u’ Vowel Sounds

The long /u/ sound is pronounced like the word ‘unit’. It is quite similar to sound what you hear in words like “cube” or “tube.”

There are four ways of spelling Long ‘u’ sounds:

1. Just the Letter U
   You can spell the long /u/ sound with just the letter u. These words usually have more than one syllable with the long /u/ sound in the first syllable.
2. U _ E Words
   These words spell the long /u/ sound using a split digraph u_e where u is in the middle of the word and an e at the end of the word.
3. UE Words and EW Words
   The long /u/ sound is spelled with the letters ue and ew, at the end of some words.

Long ‘u’ Vowel Sound Words

Long /u/ words with just letter u.

List of Long ‘u’ words using the split digraph u_e.

list of Long ‘u’ sound words by adding ‘ue’ and ‘ew’.

We hope you have learned the way short and long u sounds are used in a word. Stay tuned to EnglishBix for more resources related to elementary grade..

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