|
|
English Structures
Phonetics
|
The Production ofVowels
Quick Quiz
- How many vowels are there?
|
Quick Quiz Answer
If you said 5, you're wrong!
You were counting letters in the English alphabet that represent vowel sounds, not the number of sounds themselves.
There are, among the world's languages, 28 vowel sounds, but English has only 11 . . . plus 3 diphthongs. |
Definition of a Vowel |
A vowel is a sound produced when the vocal tract shapes the air stream but doesn’t impede it. There is no stopping or friction or forcing it around the tongue. The air is basically allowed to flow straight out the oral cavity.
To understand the productions of vowels better, do the activity below: |
|
Activity: Hearing Differences in Vowels
Read out loud this list of words from top to bottom and pay attention to your mouth and tongue:
Beet
Bit
Bait
Bet
Bat
Baht |
Did you notice anything about your mouth and tongue as you
said the words in the list?
Try it again: Beet, Bit, Bait, Bet,
Bat, Baht
As you went down the list, your mouth opened wider and wider, and your tongue got lower and lower. It began almost touching the top of your mouth but ended nowhere near it. This is the difference between the High vowels and the Low vowels. |
Now read out loud this list of words, still paying attention to your mouth and tongue:
Boot
Book
Boat
Bought |
Notice anything this time about your mouth?
Try it out loud again: Boot, Book, Boat,
Bought
Now compare those words to these: Beet, Bit,
Bait, Bet, Bat, Baht
Your lips were rounded with the words in the first list, but not with the second. This is the difference between the Round vowels and the Unround vowels. |
| Now read each pair of words aloud:
Boot-Beet
Book-Bit
Boat-Bait
Bought-Bet
The part of your tongue that you use changes: the i, e, and a words use the front part of your tongue, and the o words use the back part. This is the difference between Front and Back vowels. |
|
Technical Names of Vowels |
|
Vowels are identified by three features:
1. The front-to-back portion of the tongue that is used to shape the sound: front, central, back.
2. The height that the tongue is raised or lowered to: high, mid, low.
3. The shape of the lips: round or unround.
|
| The easiest way to visualize this is with a diagram.
The IPA chart corresponds to the placement and shape of the tongue in the mouth. |
Note the chart representing tongue position. |
This correlates with the IPA chart of vowels. |
|
|
|
| The alphabet has only 5 vowels because some languages (like Latin, whose alphabet is used for English) only have five vowels.
They are the cardinal vowels. |
Where English uses 11 of the IPA vowel sounds, Spanish only uses 5. It would seem that it is easier for a native English speaker to learn Spanish than for a native Spanish speaker to learn English. The English speaker is using known sounds in a different context, but the Spanish speaker has the added difficulty of learning new, unfamiliar vowel sounds. |
|
The mismatch between the number of vowel sounds in English and the number of letters in the English alphabet produce some of the difficulties in learning to read English. Add to the insufficient number of symbols the fact that the pronunciation of English vowels changed during the Great Vowel Shift, and you will see why it is so hard to learn to read in English.
Each letter that represents a vowel must have more than one pronunciation attached to it, as the letter "a" does in mat, mate, and mama. In addition, each vowel sound has several different spellings attached to it. The sound [i] has 11 different spellings in English! |
Vowel Symmetry |
| Languages usually have symmetry in their vowel system.
If there is a high front vowel, there will usually be a high back vowel,
too.
But symmetry isn’t perfect. For example, English has an open-mid
front vowel [æ] as in bat, but not an open-mid back vowel. |
Diphthongs |
A diphthong is two vowel sounds that glide together.
English has three diphthongs, but some speakers create many more as they
speak.
People from the Upper Midwest region (Minnesota, North Dakota) dipthongize
the least.
We can say that we speak the purest vowel sounds in the US.
And then get made fun of in movies like Fargo.
|
The three main diphthongs in English are
- [ɔj] as in boy
- [aj] as in high
- [aw] as in now
|
Speakers who diphthongize a lot usually do it in the way the chart below shows.
|
|
|
| |
| Part 6 |
| |
|
American Sign Language The sign language used by the deaf community in the United States.
Test of English for International Communication. A standardized exam for Educational Testing Services that is intended to determine the general capability of an NNSE to use English to conduct business. It is used by some businesses, predominantly in Asia, in hiring.
Test of English as a Foreign Language. A standardized exam from Educational Testing Services that is intended to determine the general capability of an NNSE to use English as the language of insruction .It is used as an admissions requirement by most US universities and colleges for international students.
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. A term that encompasses both TEFL and TESL. It is the name of the professional organization to which many teachers belong. TESOL the organization has many regional affiliates both in the US and abroad.
Teaching English as Second Language. Refers to the activity of teaching the English language as a tool necessary for some daily task like instruction, shopping, or interpersonal interactions.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Refers to the activity of teaching the English language as an intellectual, academic pursuit to non-native speakers of English.
Native Speaker of English. Refers to a person who acquired English in infancy and young childhood as a first language.
Native Speaker. Refers to a person whose relationship to a language is that it was encountered in infancy and young childhood as the dominant language of the environment.
Non-Native Speaker of English. Refers to a person who didn't acquire English as a first language, but came to it after another language was established.
Non-Native Speaker. Refers to a person whose relationship to a particular language is that he/she didn't encounter it while initially acquiring language, but came to it after another language was established.
Limited English Proficient. An adjectival phrase used to refer to the same students as ELL refers to. LEP is falling into disuse as it focuses attention on student deficiency rather than on the positive attribute of learning. Is being replaced by ELL.
Second Language. Refers to any language gained subsequent to the first or native language. It is acquired or learned secondarily to the native language. Doesn't refer to the ordinal numbering of languages, only to the relationship of a particular language to a persons native language.
First Language. Refers to the language that an individual encounters as an infant and young child; a persons native language.
English for Specific Purposes. Refers to the goal of learning English to use it for highly focused activity, such as for business or for aviation communication.
English as a Second Language Program. refers to a school program that is purposefully structured to provide instruction on the English language to NNSEs. An ESL program does not typically include instruction in any other subjects than English. An ESL program may be a component of a larger ELL program at a school.
English as a Second Language. Refers to the subject matter of the English language and the methodology for teaching the English language to non-native speakers. ESL makes no reference to the subjects other than English, but it is not methodology alone either, it refers to teaching the English language as content area. Typically, ESL refers to the study of English in a country where it is used for at least one daily task, such as instruction, interpersonal relations, or shopping.
English Langauge Learner Program. Refers to a school program that is purposly structured to provide instruction on the English language and instruction in other content areas to English Language Learners.
English Language Learner. Refers to students who are in the process of learning English, whether they are in ESL classes exclusively or a combination of ESL classes and other subject area classes.
English as a Foreign Langauge. Refers to the study of English as an intellectual, academic pursuit, not a a language whose use is necessary or desirable for daily life, although it may be used as a research tool. Typically, EFL is the study of English in a country where English is not a language of instruction or daily interactions, such as in Italy or in Saudi Arabia.
English for Academic Purposes. Refers to the goal of learning English to use it as the language of instruction for other subject areas.
Refers to a school program that is purposely structured so that students will use two languages on a daily basis.
Refers to the use of two languages in any capacity on a daily basis. A bilingual person uses two languages on a daily basis--for work and at home, perhaps, or for different subjects at school. Can also refer to the ability to use two languages, even if not used daily.
