CHAPTER 29

Using y, ee, i, ea ie, ey

There are seven different ways we can produce the long ee sound at the end of a word. This must seem

rather excessive, but there is a pattern and there are surprisingly few anomalies.

(^) Sometimes the sound is the same but the spelling differs. Take that famous alcoholic beverage. In the
United States and Ireland, it is spelled whiskey, but the Canadians, the Scots, and the English spell it
whisky. The original Scots Gaelic word was uisge, and the Irish Gaelic word was uisce. Just to make it
more interesting, the Scots call it scotch, a word that they never, ever use to describe things Scottish.
Spelling rule #1: The most common way in which to produce the long e sound at the end of a word is
by using the letter y:
(^) Note that almost any word can be made into an adjective by the addition of the y:
(^) A small group of words that end in y, however, have the long i sound:
(^) When the y follows a vowel at the end of a word, it is usually taking the place of the letter i, and thus
forms a diphthong. The y is usually silent or sounded very faintly.
(^) When a word begins with a y, the letter is always a consonant. The exceptions are a few rare words
like the archaic yclept and scientific words such as ytrium oxide.
When the y appears within a word, that word is most probably of Greek origin and may have the long i
sound, the short i sound, or a combination:
(^) Spelling rule #2: Another way in which the long e sound can be spelled is with ee.
(^) Fewer than one hundred commonly used English words end in ee. About half of them describe a person
or a position:
(^) Spelling rule #3: Another way to obtain the long e sound is to use the letter i. There are very few
such words, and most of them are exotic imports, including many Italian words. The first seven