Ea

ea is a vowel digraph used in many languages. In English, ea usually represents the monophthong /i/ as in meat, leaf, and bead. Due to a sound change that happened in Middle English, it also often represents the vowel /ɛ/ as in sweat, deaf, and head. Rare pronunciations are /eɪ/ in just break, great, steak, and yea, and /æ/ in the archaic ealdorman. When followed by r, it can represent the standard outcomes of the previously mentioned three vowel... More

ea is a vowel digraph used in many languages. In English, ea usually represents the monophthong /i/ as in meat, leaf, and bead. Due to a sound change that happened in Middle English, it also often represents the vowel /ɛ/ as in sweat, deaf, and head. Rare pronunciations are /eɪ/ in just break, great, steak, and yea, and /æ/ in the archaic ealdorman. When followed by r, it can represent the standard outcomes of the previously mentioned three vowels in this environment - /ɪə(ɹ)/ as in "beard", /ɜ(ɹ)/ as in "heard", and /ɛə(ɹ)/ as in "bear", respectively - and as another rare exception, also /ɑ(ɹ)/ in the words hearken, heart and hearth. It is often just pronounced as two vowels, like /eɪ.ɑ/ (e.g. seance), /i.ɑ/ (caveat), /i.æ/ (reality), /i.eɪ/ (create), and /i.ɪ/ (lineage). Unstressed it may be /jə/ (ocean) or /ə/ (Eleanor). In Irish it is used to write the sounds /a/ and /aː/, between a slender and a broad consonant. ea (e͡a) is also the transliteration of the ᛠ rune of the Anglo...

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