How do you spell short vowel sounds?

Newbie here.

If I wanted to spell out the sounds short vowels make, would these be accurate? a - ah, e - eh, i - ee, o - ou, u - uh


No, you have to use standard but specialized symbols.

  • ɑ as in father.
  • æ as in ham.
  • ɛ as in dress.
  • ɪ as in kit.
  • ɔ as in fought.
  • ʌ as in cut.

There’s also:

  • ə as in the unstressed syllable of about.
  • ɝ as in nurse.
  • ɚ as in the unstressed syllable of farmer.

and several more like those.

This is because no so-called “spelling pronunciations” are unambiguous in all cases and accent-neutral.