UE (cue) Sound Word List
OnTrack Reading Phonics Program
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The /ue/ sound has four spellings, ue (cue), u-e (cube), u (cubed), and ew (few). None of the /ue/ spellings are commonly seen in one-syllable words and all of them can also represent the /oo/ sound.
As noted on the list page, young readers should be taught to try the /ue/ sound first when encountering the /ue/ spellings. That is because the more likely sound of those spellings is the /oo/ sound, and it is relatively easy to make the oral shift from /ue/ to /oo/. The reason is that we tend to say /oo/ for these spellings when the /ue/ sound presents a bit of a tongue twister. So they will usually end up at the correct sound while trying the /ue/ sound even if it's the /oo/ sound in the word. Going the other way, from /oo/ to /ue/, is not likely to naturally occur.
Note: In one-syllable words like cued or fused, the "ed" ending should be treated as a digraph for the /d/ sound, leaving only the letter "u" to represent the /ue/ sound. The "u" spelling is more obvious in longer words like "music," "humid," and "uniform".
Of the 7,000 words in the database constructed from a popular children’s dictionary, 21 of them are one-syllable words in which the vowel sound is /ue/.
