This sound is /g/, as in the word 'guy.' This is another voiced stop phoneme, like /d/, so again we have to be vigilant not to land on a vowel sound after it. It’s not /guh/ or even /goo/; just /g/. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents this phoneme with the following symbol: g. In the early stages of the curriculum, Once’s instructional content represents the sound with a symbol that is made by typing ‘g’ in a specialized font. This specialized orthography helps beginning readers (pre-kindergarten students through early elementary grades) learn letter-sound correspondence more quickly. By the middle stages of the curriculum, the specialized orthography is phased out and replaced by letters in a serif font.

Back to all phonemes