Why can we hear the long i in life, but not in live and give? They all end with e, so what’s going on? Normally, an e at the end of a word changes the vowel before it. It makes the vowel “say its name”: hop → hope rid → ride cap → cape That’s the magic e. So what about live and give? Well, English words aren’t allowed to end with the letter v. So if a word ends with a /v/ sound, we must add an e: live, give, love, have. In these words, the e doesn’t change the sound. It’s just a spelling rule. A