Letter Sounds vs. Letter Names: Why We Teach ‘Ah’ Before ‘Ay’

Here’s a small experiment. Say the alphabet names of c, a, t out loud: “see, ay, tee”. Now try to squash them together into a word. You get “see-ay-tee” — nothing like “cat”. Now do it with the sounds: /c/ /a/ /t/. “Cat” appears instantly. That’s the whole argument of this article in ten seconds: children read with letter sounds, not letter names — yet names are almost always what we teach first.

The short answer

Letter names (“ay, bee, see”) are labels; letter sounds (/a/, /b/, /c/) are what letters actually do inside words. Reading is built entirely from sounds — no English word contains the name “double-u”. So quality phonics programmes teach sounds first, add names later, and never let the alphabet song stand in for reading instruction. If your child already knows the names, nothing is broken — you just add the sounds now.

Why letter names can’t build words

Blending only works when the pieces you blend are the pieces the word is made of. “Dog” is /d/ /o/ /g/. A child armed only with “dee, oh, gee” is trying to assemble a puzzle with pieces from a different box — “dee-oh-gee” doesn’t compress into “dog” however fast you say it.

To be fair to names: research reviews such as the National Early Literacy Panel count alphabet knowledge — names and sounds — among the strongest predictors of later reading. Names aren’t poison; several helpfully contain their sound (“bee” starts with /b/). The problem is order and emphasis: names alone can’t produce reading, and teaching them as the main event delays the skill that can.

A grandmother once proudly showed me her granddaughter reciting the entire alphabet in under ten seconds — let’s call her Ishita, four years old, note-perfect. I asked Ishita to read “cat” from a card. She looked at me blankly and said “see, ay, tee” — exactly the trap this article is about. Six weeks of sounds instead of names, and she was blending real words.

Monika Verma — Lead Trainer, LittleLearns

Getting the sounds right (this is where reading unlocks)

Teaching sounds first only works if the sounds themselves are clean. Two rules do most of the work.

“My child already knows the alphabet song. Have I ruined anything?”

Not remotely — this is the most common starting position I see in demo classes, and it’s completely recoverable. The song is genuinely useful later, for dictionary order and for talking about letters. Your child simply has a second column to fill in: “you know this letter’s name is bee — its sound is /b/, and the sound is what we read with.”

Frame it exactly like that, as letters having a name and a job. Children accept this instantly — they already know their friend “Sam” can also be “goalkeeper”. From then on, when reading, always cue the job: “what does it say?”, never “what’s it called?”

A sensible order to teach the sounds

Don’t go A, B, C. The programme I’m certified in and teach from, Jolly Phonics, starts with a small set of high-frequency sounds that combine into many real words quickly — its first letter group is s, a, t, p, i, n, which alone build sat, pin, tap, nip, pat, tin and more.

Introduce a few sounds at a time, review daily at speed (“fast sounds”), and start blending as soon as two or three sounds are known — blending early is the point of the whole exercise. From there the sequence continues through the rest of the single letters, then digraphs (sh, ch, th). The full age-by-age roadmap is in our complete phonics-first guide.

One prerequisite check: sounds attach best when a child can already hear sounds inside spoken words. If first-sound games (“what does ball start with?”) are still hard, spend a week or two there first — here’s how to tell which skill your child needs.

Now practise a real blend using the sound-boxes tool — the same one used across our lessons:

What this looks like in a real week

Ten minutes a day. No worksheets required, no ₹2,000 kit — paper cards you make together work as well as anything sold in a box. What matters is clean sounds, daily review, and blending from the first week. Once those first words click, a child stops seeing letters as school-shapes and starts seeing them as a code they’ve cracked — and orthographic mapping takes over from there (here’s how words become permanent).

Milestones from the curriculum

Ask Mrs. Monika: quick answers

Children learn at different paces — see our learning-outcomes note. Names of children in this article have been changed. If you’d like Monika to hear your child’s letter sounds and blending live, that’s exactly what the free 20-minute demo class is for.