Phonetics: /f/

In British English, the phonetic symbol /f/ corresponds to the initial consonant sound in words like "fish", and "food" and the final one in "life" and "half". Just to keep students - and their teachers - on their toes, there are also a few words where it corresponds to "gh", as in "cough" or "ph", as in "physics"

Some common words which practice the pronunciation of /f/ include the following:

• with initial "/f/": fail - fall - fight - find - forget;
• with final "/f/": half - knife - life - safe - staff - stuff - wife;
• with "gh": cough - enough - laugh - rough - tough;
• with "ph": philosophy - telephone - phonetics - physical - physics - sulphur.

Written by NativeEnglish

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