Five of the Trickiest English Words Our Campers Faced (and How to Tackle Them with Readable English)

English learners often ask the same question: “Why aren’t words pronounced the way they are spelled?"

At Summer Camp Wonder, our seven campers stumbled across this problem again and again. From silent letters to unexpected sounds, many words just refused to play by the rules. The good news? With a little help from Readable English, they found a way through.

Here are five of the trickiest words they faced, and how learners everywhere can tackle them with more confidence.

1. Cough 😷

The “-ough” cluster has so many pronunciations: though, through, rough, cough, bough. No wonder learners freeze when they see it.

With Readable English, the pronunciation becomes instantly visible, with grayed out silent letters and the Fun Enough glyph indicating the /f/ sound.

2. Ocean 🌊

Ocean is another tricky word, with both the 'c' and 'ea' not making their primary (or even secondary!) sound.

With the markup, students can see the Dome glyph over 'o', the Sharp Hat glyph representing the /sh/ sound, and the Upper Cup glyph representing the unstressed schwa sound in this word. The result is a decodable /oh/ - /sh/ /uh/ /n/.  

3. Yacht ⛵

Even fluent English speakers pause at this word. Usually ‘ch’ makes the sound /ch/, and sometimes it can make the sound /k/ (like in 'character'), but here the ‘ch’ is totally silent! 

In Readable English, 'yacht' becomes a simple CVC word: Aussie Oswald over 'a' represents the short /o/ sound, and 'ch' is grayed out. 

4. Vegetable 🥦

Many learners want to pronounce this word with four syllables “ve-ge-ta-ble.” But in most accents of English, it’s pronounced as three.

Here's where the syllable breaks in Readable English simplify decoding: learners can see that there are only three syllable, and the J Dot glyph indicates that in this word 'g' is pronounced /j/. 

5. Choir 🎶

It would make sense that learners might attempt this word as “choy-er” or “cho-ear” and be understandably bewildered when they find out it’s pronounced “kwire.”

With Readable English, learners can sound out the word letter by letter starting with the standard sound for 'c' (/k/), Wonder One over 'o' (/w/), I Spy over 'i' (long i sound), and standard sound for 'r' (/r/). 

At Camp Wonder, the magic wasn’t just in solving these words; it was in the joy of realizing that reading English doesn’t have to be frustrating. With the right tools, even the strangest spellings become manageable, even fun.

Want to see how our campers unlocked other tricky words?

👉 Download the free Summer Camp Wonder ebook here or open it in your ereader library.