Summer`s project 1 on Vowel sounds

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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/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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/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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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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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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http://www.letstalkpodcast.com/

http://www.oup.com/

http://www.wikipedia.com/

Education

Summer`s project 1 on Vowel sounds