Why does ReadingDoctor Online pronounce “w” and “y” as “www” and “yyy” instead of “wuh” and “yuh”?

Modified on Fri, 21 Aug at 6:27 PM

ReadingDoctor® recommends pronouncing the sounds represented by w and y as “www” and “yyy”, without adding an extra “uh” sound. The “uh” sound is a vowel sound called a schwa. When we say “wuh” or “yuh”, we are actually adding an extra vowel sound that is not represented by the grapheme.

Why does this matter when learning to read?

The purpose of teaching grapheme–phoneme correspondences is to help students decode unfamiliar words.

When students decode a word, they pronounce the sounds represented by its graphemes and then blend those sounds together. The more closely the sounds resemble the spoken word, the easier the word is to blend and recognise.

For example, consider the word wet.

If a student pronounces w as “wuh”, they may sound the word out as:

“wuh...e...t”

When blended, this sounds like wuhet, which is less similar to the spoken word wet.

If the student instead uses a pure /w/ sound:

“www...e...t”

the sounds blend much more naturally into:

“wet”

The same principle applies to y.

For example:

“yyy...e...s” → yes

is easier to blend than:

“yuh...e...s”

Adding a schwa makes the student's pronunciation less like the word they are trying to read.

But can /w/ and /y/ really be stretched?

Yes. The phonemes /w/ and /y/ can be produced without adding a vowel afterwards.

Try slowly saying:

wwwet

yyyyes

You can prolong the beginning of each word slightly without saying “wuh” or “yuh”. This is similar to other continuous consonant sounds.

For example:

rrrr...ed → red

llll...ad → lad

mmmm...ap → map

We would not normally teach a child to pronounce these sounds as “ruh”, “luh” or “muh”, because the extra vowel makes blending more difficult. The same principle applies to w and y.

Why do some people say “wuh” and “yuh”?

These pronunciations are commonly used when teaching letter sounds and may feel more familiar to some adults. However, the “uh” is not part of the /w/ or /y/ phoneme. It is an additional vowel sound.

ReadingDoctor® therefore recommends the cleaner pronunciations:

w → “www”

y → “yyy”

These pronunciations make it easier for students to blend the sounds together when decoding unfamiliar words.

Which pronunciation does ReadingDoctor® use?

ReadingDoctor® recommends “www” and “yyy” because these pronunciations do not introduce an additional schwa sound.

ReadingDoctor® Online includes the W/Y Pronunciation setting which may be changed in the Options Menu.

You can choose between:

Recommended — “www” and “yyy”, without the added schwa

Traditional — “wuh” and “yuh”

We recommend using the Recommended setting!

For more information about pronouncing graphemes accurately, see