Pronounce English Accurately

Video Text

Vowels - Introduction

We classify consonants by voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation, as we've seen, but we cannot use that system for vowels.

First of all, all vowels are voiced - if they weren't they'd be silent - we would just be breathing out.

The basis of all the vowel sounds is this voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, and this is the same whatever vowel sound is being made - it's just a sound source.

The various different vowel sounds are created by modifying the shape of the vocal tract.

This is done by moving the tongue around so that different parts of come close to, but never touch, the other articulators.

When we say [i-i-i-i] the blade of the tongue is very close to the roof of the mouth - just a little higher and it would become the approximant [j], a consonant, and a little higher still and it would become a consonant with fricative noise: [ç].

When we say [a-a-a-a] the mouth is open and the tongue is lowered right down, leaving a clear view to the back of our throat.

That's why the doctor always gets us to say 'ah' when he wants to look at our tonsils.

[ə-ə-ə-ə] is between these two extremes; the tongue is relaxed and in a central position, and the mouth is half open.

At the same time, we change the shape of our lips, from neutral: [ə-ə-ə-ə] to spread [i-i-i-i] - like smiling, as when the photographer gets us to say 'cheese', to rounded [u-u-u-u], almost as rounded as /w/.

We can make a continuum of vowel sounds by varying the height and position of the tongue and the shape of the lips: [i - ɪ - e - a - ɑ - ə - ɒ - ɔ - ʊ - u].

When I did that I wasn't actually thinking about the sounds I was making, I was just concentrating on the physical action, gradually moving the position of my tongue and the shape of my lips, and as if by accident you could hear some familiar vowels from English and other languages in there.

[i - ɪ - e - a - ɑ - ə - ɒ - ɔ - ʊ - u]

So rather than voicing, place and manner, we classify the vowels by referring to tongue height, whether the front, the central part, or the back of the tongue is highest in the mouth, and whether the lips are spread, neutral, or rounded in shape.

In phonetics, the vowel space - the area within which the tongue can move to make all the various different vowels - is charted into an oval shape

like this

And then from this a stylised quadrilateral shape is created,

like this

and then this is straightened up on the page

and divided into thirds vertically and horizontally

to show where each of vowels is made at the front,

in the central area,

or at the back

of the vowel space, and whether the tongue is high mid or low,

and the vowels are plotted on this.

This vowel quadrilateral appears in all phonetic descriptions of vowels and I will be using it throughout the section on vowels, and I'll also describe the shape of the lips for each vowel.

English has long vowels and short vowels. These contrast in length and quality. Long vowels are transcribed in the IPA with two small triangular dots after the vowel symbol, like this:

/ː/

The length mark looks quite like a colon in punctuation, but it's actually two tiny triangles.

Examples of long vowels are /iː/ and /ɑː/ and /uː/; contrasting examples of short vowels are /ɪ/ and /æ/ and /ʊ/.

Both the length and the quality are different in these contrasting pairs of vowels - that's why we use a different letter for each of them.

Vowels can be pure or they can be made up of a glide from one sound to another.

If a vowel is pure we can lengthen it artificially and continue to make the same sound with no problem - 'cheeese', 'haaaart', 'fooood'.

If it's a glide from one sound to another we cannot lengthen it like that.

If I say 'hide' and try to lengthen it, it doesn't work - I can say 'haaaaaid' or 'haiiiid',

but I can't lengthen the /aɪ/ sound because it is a glide from one sound to another: [a] to [ɪ] so I get a long [a] or a long [ɪ] but not a long /aɪ/.

Another name for 'glides' is 'diphthongs', and this is what I will call them.

'Diphthong' should be pronounced /ˈdɪf.θɒŋ/ not /ˈdɪp.θɒŋ/; it comes from Greek di-, meaning 'two', and phthongos, meaning 'sound'.

Pure vowels are also called monophthongs.

There are 20 vowels in British English. That's a very large number by most standards. Many languages have only five - Japanese, Greek, and Spanish being three examples.

As I did with the consonants, I'm going to go rapidly through all the vowels of English in this lesson, without explanation, putting their IPA transcriptions up on the screen as I do.

The purpose of this lesson is to allow you to hear and see all the vowels alongside each other, to identify which ones are difficult for you, and to distinguish one from each other.

Trust me, they are all different and you may have to work on both perception and production to get them right.

After that, I'll go through them all one at a time.

First we'll go quickly through all the 12 pure vowels of English and after that we'll do the eight diphthongs.

I will give an example of each vowel before a voiceless consonant, a voiced consonant and, if possible, at the end of a word. I say “if possible” because, with one exception, short vowels cannot occur at the end of words.

For the sale of clarity, I have numbered the vowels and if there is any doubt at any stage about which vowel I am talking about, then I will refer to it by its number as well as by one of the example words I give for each of them.

Starting with the tongue high up at the front, with spread lips, and working gradually to the back, with rounded lips, the 12 pure vowels of English are:

1. /iː/ - as in 'feet', 'lead' and 'me'

2. /ɪ/ - as in 'fit' and 'bid'

3. /e/ - as in 'bet' and 'bed'

4. /æ/ - as in 'bat' and 'bad'

5. /ə/ - as in the first syllable of 'upon', the middle syllable of 'vitamin', and the first and last syllables of 'banana'. This is the only short vowel which can occur at the end of a word.

6. /ʌ/ - as in 'hut' and 'mud'

7. /ɜː/ - as in 'hurt', 'heard' and 'her'

8. /ɑː/ - as in 'heart', 'card, and 'far'

9. /ɒ/ - as in 'pot' and 'cod'

10. /ɔː/ - as in 'fort', 'roared', and 'raw'

11. /ʊ/ - as in 'put' and 'hood'

12. /uː/ - as in 'hoot', 'chewed' and 'through'

The eight diphthongs next:

13. /ɪə/ - as in 'pierce', 'peered' and 'ear'

14. /eə/ - as in 'scarce', 'dared' and 'hair'

15. /ʊə/ - as in 'lured' and 'pure' - I'm not sure there is an example with a voiceless consonant for this relatively rare sound

16. /eɪ/ - as in 'date', 'made' and 'say'

17. /aɪ/ - as in 'light', 'bide' and 'buy'

18. /ɔɪ/ - as in 'choice', 'noise' and 'toy'

19. /əʊ/ - as in 'boat', 'load' and 'bow'

20. /aʊ/ - as in 'shout', 'loud' and 'cow'.

Twenty is a lot of vowels to distinguish and some of the distinctions are likely to be problematic just about whatever your first language is.

But not all of them.

Concentrate on those contrasts which are difficult for you.