The -le, -el, -al and -il endings

Four spellings, one sound: /əl/. Reading them is easy; choosing between them when writing is not, and there is no rule that decides it.

Word endings

-le / -el / -al / -il SUFFIX_LE_01

Useful pattern · High reliability · Common · Intermediate · Reading

• /əl/ -le / -el / -al / -il: little, camel, animal, pencil

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 12: Multisyllable Decoding

Child explanation

Little, camel, animal and pencil all end with the same quiet sound, spelled four different ways.

The rule

-le, -el, -al and -il all say /əl/ at the end of a word. For reading they are interchangeable; for spelling there is no reliable rule, and -le is the most common.

What is really going on

Another reading-easy, spelling-hard case, like er/ir/ur. The one useful tendency is that -le follows a consonant and is by far the most frequent, while -al often marks an adjective (national, musical, personal) and -el is largely unpredictable.

Position in the word

• End of a word — Always word-final and unstressed. For example: little, camel, animal, pencil.

Examples

Easy examples

little, camel, animal, pencil, table

More examples

apple, bottle, purple, simple, travel, tunnel, level, model, medal, pedal, local, April, fossil

Contrast pairs

• table versus camel — Same sound, different spelling.
• medal versus meddle — Homophones with different spellings.

Teacher note

Say plainly that this one is easy to read and hard to write, the same as er/ir/ur. Children are reassured by being told which difficulties are real and which are not, and it stops them searching for a rule that does not exist.

Learn these first

• Consonant-le syllable — -ble -dle -tle -ple -kle -gle — The final syllable of little, table, purple and candle. Three letters, one syllable, and the e is silent.
• Schwa — any vowel letter, unstressed — The most common vowel sound in English, spelled with any vowel letter at all. It is why decoding every vowel fully produces a word nobody says.

Related rules

• Consonant-le syllable — -ble -dle -tle -ple -kle -gle — The final syllable of little, table, purple and candle. Three letters, one syllable, and the e is silent.
• Schwa — any vowel letter, unstressed — The most common vowel sound in English, spelled with any vowel letter at all. It is why decoding every vowel fully produces a word nobody says.
• ER, IR and UR — er / ir / ur — Three spellings, one sound. For reading this is easy; for spelling it is the hardest thing in English, and the difference should be said out loud.

• Previous in Word endings: The -cial and -tial endings — -cial / -tial — Both are /ʃəl/ — special, partial, official. Another place where ci and ti spell /ʃ/.
• Next in Word endings: Y becomes I before a suffix — y + suffix → i — Happy becomes happier, cry becomes cried, baby becomes babies. A reliable change, and one that explains a lot of otherwise odd-looking words.
• All reading rules

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