Topic Content:
- Speech Work: Introduction to English Vowel Sounds
The English alphabet has the following vowels: a, e, i, o, u. English vowel sounds are, however, different from the letters of the alphabet. English vowel sounds are the symbols (phonemesphoneme, in linguistics, is the smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another, as the element p in “tap,” which separates that word from “tab,” “tag,” and... More) used to represent the various sounds we produce when we pronounce English vowels.
There are 20 English vowel sounds. Twelve of the sounds are classified as pure vowels or monophthongs because of their single quality. The remaining eight sounds are termed diphthongs because of their double quality.
Note carefully the 20 English vowel sounds below:
Monophthongs:
| Vowel Symbol | Examples | |
| 1 | /i:/ | seat |
| 2 | /i/ | sit |
| 3 | /e/ | set |
| 4 | /æ/ | sat |
| 5 | /a:/ | car |
| 6 | /ɒ/ | pot |
| 7 | /ɔ:/ | port |
| 8 | /ʊ/ | put |
| 9 | /u:/ | fool |
| 10 | /˄/ | cut |
| 11 | /з:/ | girl |
| 12 | /ə/ | ago |
Diphthongs:
| Vowel Symbol | Examples | |
| 13 | /ai/ | fine |
| 14 | /əʊ/ | go |
| 15 | /ei/ | late |
| 16 | /aʊ/ | loud |
| 17 | /ɔi/ | coin |
| 18 | /iə/ | here |
| 19 | /eə/ | hair |
| 20 | /ʊə/ | poor |
Three things are required from you regarding the above sounds.
1. Recognize each of the symbols (phonemes)
2. Pronounce each phoneme appropriately
3. Locate each phoneme in words where it occurs.
Our subsequent description of each vowel sound will greatly assist you.
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