left Modern English spelling patterns confusing. Spelling patterns usually follow certain conventions but nearly every sound can be legitimately spelled with different letters or letter combinations. For example, the digraph ee almost always represents (feed), but in many varieties of English the same sound can also be represented by a single e (be), the letter y (fifty), by i (graffiti) or the digraphs ie (field), ei (deceit), ea (feat), ey (key), eo (people), oe (amoeba), ae (aeon), is (debris), it (esprit), ui (mosquito) or these letter patterns: ee-e (cheese), ea-e (leave), i-e (ravine), e-e (grebe), ea-ue (league), ei-e (deceive), ie-e (believe), i-ue (antique), eip (receipt). On the other hand, one symbol, such as the digraph th, can represent more than one phoneme: voiceless interdental /θ/ as in thin, voiced interdental /ð/ as in this, simple /t/ as in Thomas, or even the consonant cluster /tθ/ as in eighth. The spelling systems for some languages, such as Spanish or Italian, are relatively simple because they adhere closely to the ideal one-to-one correspondence between sounds and the letter patterns that represent them. In English the spelling system is more complex and varies considerably in the degree to which it follows uniform patterns. There are several reasons for this, including: first, the alphabet has 26 letters, but the English language has 40 sounds that must be reflected in word spellings; second, English spelling began to be standardized in the 15th century, and most spellings have not been revised to reflect the long-term changes in pronunciation that are typical for all languages; and third, English frequently adopts foreign words without changing the spelling of those words. Role in beginning reading Learning the connection between written letters and spoken sounds has been viewed as a critical heuristic to word identification for decades. Understanding that there is a direct relationship between letters and sounds enables an emergent reader to decode the pronunciation of an unknown written word and associate it with a known spoken word. Typically, emergent readers identify the majority of unfamiliar printed words by sounding them out. Similarly, understanding the relationship of letters and sounds is also seen as a critical heuristic for learning to spell. Two contrasting philosophies exist with regard to emergent readers learning to associate letters to speech sounds in English. Proponents of phonics argue that this relationship needs to be taught explicitly and to be learned to automaticity, in order