Vowels in the IPA
The technical names of vowels tell three things about a sound:
- The height of the tongue (high-mid-low)
- The portion of the tongue that is raised or lowered (front-central-back)
- The tenseness of the tongue (tense-lax)
- The rounding of the lips (round-unround)
The technical names for the vowels follow the order listed above. Thus, for example, what a teacher traditionally would call “the long e sound” in an elementary classroom is technically called a high front unround vowel.
Activity: Learn the Technical Names
(Joe, Here students should be able to do something like mouse over a term and hear the sound that goes with the name and vice versa.)
i |
high front unround vowel |
ɪ |
high front lax unround vowel |
e |
mid front unround vowel |
ɛ |
mid front lax unround vowel |
æ |
low front unround vowel |
a |
low central unround vowel |
ʌ |
mid central unstressed vowel |
ə |
mid central stressed vowel |
u |
high back round vowel |
ʊ |
high back lax round vowel |
o |
mid back round vowel |
ɔ |
low back round vowel |
Activity: Relating Technical Names to Traditional Names
The IPA symbols associated with many of the vowel speech sounds are already familiar symbols for native speakers of English (e.g., /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/), but they may be used to represent different sounds from what they represent in a traditional approach. Some other IPA vowel symbols are unusual.
NSEs who are elementary teachers may find it hardest to throw out the traditional way of referring to vowels, which is based on long outmoded historical descriptions of English. (We're talking descriptions that hark back to the Middle English variety of English from around 1400 C.E.). The traditional ways are beginning to be replaced (for example, in the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech), but the traditional terminology is still prevalent.
The main reason for dropping the traditional way of calling a vowel sound "the long a sound" or "the long e sound" is that in present day English, these vowels are not pronounced for a longer amount of time than other vowels, and calling them "long" gives the wrong information, and perhaps the wrong idea, on pronunciation to NNSEs. Nevertheless, phonics teaching materials and testing in schools still often hang on to the traditional approach, so an ESL teacher in the public schools should be able to manage both systems.
| IPA | Technical Name | Traditional Name | Trad |
i |
high front unround vowel | the long e sound | |
ɪ |
high front lax unround vowel | the short i sound | |
e |
mid front unround vowel | the long a sound | |
ɛ |
mid front lax unround vowel | the short e sound | |
æ |
low front unround vowel | the short a sound | |
a |
low central unround vowel | the short o sound | |
ʌ |
mid central unstressed vowel | ||
ə |
mid central stressed vowel | the schwa sound | |
u |
high back round vowel | the long u sound | |
ʊ |
high back lax round vowel | the short u sound | |
o |
mid back round vowel | the long o sound | |
ɔ |
low back round vowel |
Activity: Go to Multiple Choice questions in Moodle to practice exercises on IPA consonants