AE (Mae) Sound Word List
The /ae/ sound, often called the long-a sound, is one of five sounds that are named by the name of a single vowel letter. The letters are a, e, i, o, and u. This class of vowel sounds has many spelling options. In the case of the /ae/ sound, there are eight common spellings.
Of the 7,000 words in the database constructed from a popular children’s dictionary, 254 of them are one-syllable words in which the vowel sound is /ae/. The various spellings of the /ae/ sound are "ay", "ai", "a-e", "a", "ea", "eigh", "ey", and "ei".
The "ay" and "ey" spellings are only seen as endings in the one-syllable words in the database. The most common spelling is "a-e", a split-vowel spelling where the ending consonant sound is inserted at the dash mark. This is a great list for locating simple words that have a common spelling of the /ae/ sound, such as the "ai" in bait, drain, and mail, because the list is organized by the vowel spellings.
