One letter changes everything in English - English flexibility never ceases to surprise us

Here I am again with yet one other post about another English quirk. I couldn't help but notice that English is quite a flexible language, indeed. Some of my students consider that native English-speakers won't make an effort to understand Spanish pronunciation, in other words, they are so lazy to try an understand foreigners. I always tell them that's not true and this is why I'm writing today's entry, to cast some light on this matter. 

Well, this post intends to show you that English is so flexible that just by changing one simple vowel or sound, we have a very different word, especially in three-letter words. 

Let's take the word 'pat' (gently tapping someone)

We change the <a> into <e>, and we have a very different word: pet


Vowel change, again, now, let's try with vowel <i>, shall we? Does it work? Yes, we got the word 'pit'


Amazing, isn't it? Is it possible to continue? Indeed,, if we change letter <i> into <o>, we have 'pot':

Last but not least, we can create a new word if we change the <o> into <u>, yeah, 'put':



Wow! By changing one vowel we can have five different words! Isn't is quirky? As you can see these words have completely different meanings! 

Can we try these logic again? Of course we can!

                    Bat                                       Bet                                             Bit

 
         Bot                                    But

This process can be repeated again and again:



                Bad                                    Bed                                          Bid

                  Bod                                       Bud

We can make this go for ages :


                Tan                                           Ten                           Tin

                 Ton                                            Tun

Wow! Can you keep imagining? Sometimes this, does work on the five vowels, but it works on four of them :
Pan     pen       pin       pun
Hat      hit         hot       hut
Sat       set       sit        sot
Man      men     min      mun 

On top of this, this is not exclusive of three letter words :

                Pack                                     Peck                                                Pick

           Pock                               Puck

             Fast                                        Fest                                         Fist

Consonants are not to be left out of the equation, though. In English by changing one simple consonant you can create tons of different words:
Imagine : bag                 bight              bang               bat
                fag                  light                fang               cat
                jag                  might              gang              fat
                lag                  right                hang              hat
                mag                sight               rang               mat
                nag                 tight                sang              pat
                rag                  fight                tang               rat
                tag                                                               sat
                wag                                                             VAT


So, start thinking in English. Take a word and change its vowels or consonants to see what happens, experiment with the English language. To finish this post, I'll be sharing with you an example of the illogical English pronunciation. 
See you around.