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A brief description and examples of vowel sounds in English
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CONTENT PAGE
Introduction 3
SUMMER JUCELYNE GÒMEZCLASIFICATION AND USE OF VOWEL SOUNDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
08Fall
VOWEL SOUNDS
P H O N O L O G Y
Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
Vowel sounds 4
Front vowel sounds 5
Central vowel sounds 6
Back vowel sounds 7
Diphtongs 8
Minimal pairs 9
Conclusion 12
References 13
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
INTRODUCTION
One of the most difficult tasks for Spanish speakers is the production of the
vowel sounds in English, the reason is that the English Language has so many
vowel sounds, and so many spelling cases for each sound, and some spelling
cases are the same but do not have the same sound.
For example the following words have the same spelling case “oo” but they have
different sounds:
FLOOR, BLOOD, BOOK, DOOM
This material aims to clearifie the most frequent doubts about vowel sound of the
English Language.
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
VOWEL SOUNDS
Vowel sounds are classified in different ways by different authors, but the
next chart shows the simplest clasiffication.
This chart is based on the position of speech organs to produce each of the
sounds, specifically HIGH, MID, LOW refers to the positions of our tongue during
the production of a vowel sound; the others refer to the position, form and mood
of the lips, for instance: when we produce front vowels our lips are spread, and
for back vowels our lips are rounded, for central vowels our lips are in a central
position, that means, not rounded but not spread.
Some of these vowel sound can be also short or long
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
FRONT VOWEL SOUNDS
/I/ /i/ /eI/ /ɛ/ /æ/The key to produce these front sounds is to take into account that the mouth is
more closed in the first ones and more open in the last ones, it means that the
jaw is higher in the first ones and lower in the last ones. The position of the
tongue is as close as possible to the front of the mouth.
Here are some examples of word that have these sounds
with their spelling cases:
/I/ Front, high, unrounded, short, laxi sixe englisho womenu busy
/i/ Front, high, unrounded, long, tenseee meetea speakeo Peoplee mei policeie nieceey key
/eI/ Front, mid, unrounded, long, tense
/ɛ/ Front, mid, unrounded, short, tensee petie friendea breada Anyai Said
/æ/ Front, low, unrounded, short, lax
a Have
a faceai trainay playea breakei eightey grey
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
CENTRAL VOWEL SOUNDS
/ʌ/ /ə/ /a/
The position of the tongue is in a central position between the front and the back of the mouth, they are also placed in the order of the “opening” of the mouth; to pronounce /a/ the mouth must be totally wide open, but in the case of the scwa´s, /ʌ/ /ə/ the mouth is almost closed but spread.
/ʌ/ /ə/ Central, mid, unrounded, short, lax
These two symbols represent basically the same sound, the only difference is how they are used; /ʌ/ is used when the stress of a word is located in the same syllable where this sound is located, and /ə/ is used when the “scwa” sound is located in an unstressed syllable.
/ʌ/ U UglyO LoveOe DoesOu YoungOo Blood
/ə/ A Afraid
ErSummer (uk)
E TakenI PencilO EloquentU SupplyY Sibyl
/a/ Central, mid, unrounded, long, tense
O HotA Father
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
BACK VOWEL SOUNDS
/u/ /ʊ/ /ou/ /ɔ/
These sound are produced with the togue positioned as far as possible from the
mouth, they are also placed in the order of the “opening” of the mouth.
/u/ Back, high, rounded, long, tense
O DoOo FoodU JuneUi FruitEw FlewOe Shoe
/ʊ/ Back, high, rounded, short, laxU BullOo GoodOu Would
/ou/ Back, mid, rounded, long, tenseO OldOa BoatOw Low
/ɔ/Or HorseAl SmallAw SawOu Thought
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
DIPHTONGS
/eɪ/ /oʊ/ (INCLUDED BEFORE)
/aʊ/ /ɔɪ/ /aɪ/ /Iə/ /eə/
These sounds are compound sounds bcause they are formed by two sounds.
/aʊ/ It moves from a Central, mid, unrounded,
long, tense to a Back, high, rounded, short, lax
Ou OutOw How
/ɔɪ/ It moves from a Central, mid, unrounded, short, lax to a Front, high, unrounded, short, laxOi CoinOy Toy
/aɪ/ It moves from a Central, mid, unrounded, long, tense to a Front, high, unrounded, short, laxI NineY MyIgh HighUy Buy
/Iə/ It moves from a Front, high, unrounded, short, lax
to a Central, mid, unrounded, short, lax
Eer EngineerEre Here
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
Ear YearEa Idea
/eə/ It moves from a Front, mid, unrounded, short, tense to a Central, mid, unrounded, short, lax
Air HairAre CareEir TheirEre ThereEar Wear
MINIMAL PAIRS
In these words, there is only one sound that make the difference in sematic. See some examples:
/i/ versus /ɪ/
beach - bitchbead - bidbeat - bitCaesars - scissorsdeep - dip
/i/ versus /æ/
breezier brassière diesels dazzles greenery granary keyless callous seaman salmon seedling saddling
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
/ʊ/ versus /u/
bull buhl
could cooed
full fool
hood who'd
looker lucre
look Luke pull pool
/eɪ/ versus /aɪ/
aid I'd
aids ides
ail I'll
ail aisle
ails aisles
ail isle ails isles
aim I'm
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
/æ/ versus /ʌ/
abstracts obstructsamber umberankle unclecampus compass dabble double fanfare funfair
/ɑ/ versus /ɔ/
ardour orderartistic autistic carcase caucus department deportment martyr mortarstarkers stalkers
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
CONCLUSION
As a student of the English Major, and as a Spanish speaker I can say that the
most difficult part of phonology, the only way to acquire a pronunciation that
doesn’t sound so weird, or what is worse, the way for not to say a word instead of
saying the one that we wanted to say is a deep study of phonology.
At the beginning of the course I thought to myself, What is this for?
Now that I have scrutinized this sub-field of the Linguistics I realized that is even
more important than a correct spelling in writing because we don´t write most of
the time, but we do speak most of the time, so, it becomes necessary to know
the correct pronunciation of the words if we want to understand people and be
understood by them.
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Summer Jucelyne Gómez VOWEL SOUNDS
REFERENCES
1- www.letstalkpodcast.com
2- www.wikipedia.com
3- www.oup.com
4- The study of Language, fourth edition, George Yules
5- http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/
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