UI

A small set — fruit, juice, suit, bruise — plus a group where the u is silent after g and q. Rare, and best learned as words.

Vowel teams

ui TEAM_UI_01

Word-family rule · Medium reliability · Rare · Advanced · Reading

• /uː/ as in fruit: fruit, juice, suit
• /ɪ/ as in build: build, guilt, quick

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 10: Diphthongs & Variant Vowels

Child explanation

Ui says /uː/ in fruit and juice. In build, the u is silent and the i says /ɪ/.

The rule

Ui represents /uː/ in a small set of French-derived words. In build, built and guilty the u is silent and the i is short — those are a separate group.

What is really going on

Two unrelated groups sharing a spelling. The /uː/ set is French — fruit, juice, suit, bruise, cruise, nuisance. The /ɪ/ set is the silent-u-after-g group, where the u is a device to keep g hard: build, guild, guilt, guitar, guide.

Position in the word

• Middle of a word — The only position. For example: fruit, juice, build.

Examples

Easy examples

fruit, juice, suit, build

More examples

bruise, cruise, nuisance, recruit, built, guilty, guild, biscuit

Exceptions

• The silent-u group: build, built, guild, guilt, guilty, guitar, guide. The u is keeping the g hard rather than forming a vowel team.
• biscuit and circuit: biscuit, circuit. The ui reduces to /ɪ/ in an unstressed syllable.

Teacher note

Teach as a short word list, not a grapheme. Fruit and juice are the two children need and the two they meet; the rest can wait. Build is better handled with the hard-g spelling device than with vowel teams.

Related rules

• OO and its two sounds — oo — /uː/ in moon and /ʊ/ in book. Roughly three to one in favour of moon, with no spelling clue — but a strong clue in the following consonant.
• Hard G — ga / go / gu / g + consonant — G is /g/ before a, o, u and consonants, at the end of words, when doubled, and in a long list of Germanic words where soft g would be expected.
• French spelling patterns — ch=/ʃ/ / -que / -ette / ou / silent final consonant — Ch as /ʃ/, -que for /k/, -ette, and a silent final consonant in ballet and buffet. Later borrowings that kept French pronunciation.

• Previous in Vowel teams: UE — ue — Long u at the end of a word — blue, true, rescue. The same two values as ew, split the same way.
• Next in Vowel teams: IE — ie — Long i at the end of a short word — pie, tie, lie — and long e in the middle of a longer one: chief, field, believe.
• All reading rules

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