Phonics rule question

[alienbump]

Can anybody explain the rule for which sound "ew" makes and when? I know I'm being dim but just can't work out when it's an "oo" (as in crew) or a "you"?? (as in new). Ta v.much

The sound /oo/ can be written various ways:

oo as in moon
-ue as in blue
u-e as in flute
-ew as in crew
-ui as in fruit
-ou as in you
-o as in move
-ough as in through

I don't think there is a rule is there? In my group I just explain that in some words the 'ew' makes the 'oo' sound and some make 'you' . Ditto the 'ue' in 'blue' and 'cue'.

Unless the 'oo' sound comes after a double consonant... trying to think of other examples now....

All the double consonant words I can think of say 'oo'

e.g. blew, crew, screw, grew

But coming after a single consonant it can be either

e.g. few, dew, lewd,

I think it's quite random!

nothing to do with single or double consonants, but the specific letters involved - both 'l' and 'r' are ones that have the 'y' sound afterwards, and those happen to be the ones that are most common in blends.

It's specific to various sounds (for linguistic reasons) and depends also a bit on accent - e.g. in British English, 'n' is followed by 'y' but not in American (so here it would be said 'nyews', but there, 'noos'); same with 't' (cf 'tyoon' or 'toon'). 'r' doesn't have a 'y' sound afterwards in either place. 'l' doesn't in either place now, much of the time, but it used to (or sometimes still does) in posh accents, as did/does 's'.

But OP, the words you list

• crew / new
• you

are just two ways of writing the same sound. There's no rule. Just has to be learnT.