What vowel sound

Learn How to Pronounce the 15 Vowel Sounds of American English — Pronuncian: American English Pronunciation

English has fifteen vowel sounds represented by the letters a, e, i, o, and u. The letters y, w and gh are also commonly used in vowel sound spellings. Vowel sounds are produced with a relatively open vocal tract. Consonant sounds, in contrast, are created by pushing air through a small opening in the vocal tract or by building up air in the vocal tract, then releasing it.

Vowel sounds are divided into the following three categories:

• Long vowels (vowels that sound like the letter name)
• Short vowels (the most common sound for a single vowel spelling)
• Other vowels (the remaining vowel sounds)

The

It is important for ESL/ELL/EFL students to realize that the terms "long" and "short" are not describing the length of time a vowel sound is said. These archaic terms are still in popular use in American classrooms and online. They are used here to give a name to a vowel sound so when the sound is discussed, the name and not the sound (which many beginner students cannot yet hear correctly) is used.

The vowel chart shows the key word, or quick reference word, for each English vowel sound. Key words are used because vowel sounds are easier to hear within a word than when they are spoken in isolation. Memorizing key words allows easier comparison between different vowel sounds. 

Phonics is the link between the spelling of a word and its pronunciation. Since English has more sounds than letters, a combination of letters is often necessary to represent a single sound. 

At their simplest, short vowel sounds are usually spelled with a single letter, while long vowel and other vowel sounds are generally spelled with combinations of letters. This should not be taken as a strict rule when learning English pronunciation, however, as there are a large number of exceptions. In addition, many spelling patterns of English pronunciation have the possibility of two or more pronunciations using that single spelling. For example, the letters 'e-a' have a different pronunciation in the words team (long e /i/) and dead (short e /ɛ/). It is helpful to learn the common spellings for each vowel sound along with knowing all the possible pronunciations for each spelling.

The English language also has a large number of words that are not pronounced the way their spelling suggests. These are called non-phonetic words, and must be memorized individually.

Vowel sounds and syllables are closely related. Syllables are naturally occurring units of sound that create the rhythm of spoken English. Words with multiple syllables always have one syllable that is stressed (given extra emphasis).

Unstressed syllables may contain schwa /ə/, and can have almost any spelling. In addition, three consonant sounds, the n sound, l sound, and r sound (called 'schwa+r' /ɚ/ when it is syllabic) can create a syllable without an additional vowel sound. These are called syllabic consonants.

How Many Vowel Sounds Does English Have?

English has five vowels, right? A, E, I, O and U. Sometimes we count Y, too — so maybe six? While this might be true about the written language, it’s not the case for spoken English. There are many more distinct English vowel sounds (or phonemes) that can make the difference between otherwise similar words.

Exactly how many vowel phonemes English has depends on which variety of the language we’re talking about. In this article, we’ll use Standard Southern British English (SSBE) and General American English (GenAm) as our reference accents. Other English accents will have a slightly different number of vowel sounds, but generally speaking, English has around 20 distinct vowel phonemes. This makes it one of the most complex vowel systems of any language in the world. Let’s get into the details.

What Is A Vowel?

In order to count the number of English vowel sounds, we need to know what counts as a vowel. Technically speaking, vowels are produced by releasing air from the lungs through the oral and/or nasal cavity. From there, we typically modify these sounds with our vocal cords, mouth and lips to produce distinct vowel sounds.

However, this description can also include sounds like the W in “with,” the Y in “year” and the R “red.” But these are not vowels because they lack the vital characteristic that all vowels have in common: Vowels are syllabic, meaning they can be a syllable all on their own.

Types Of Vowels

From here, we can divide English vowel sounds up into a couple of categories: short vowels, long vowels, diphthongs, vowels before historical R, and weak vowels. First, the distinction between short and long vowels is pretty self-explanatory. Next, diphthongs are vowel phonemes that begin as one vowel sound and slide into another, but still only make up one syllable.

Meanwhile, vowels before historical R have undergone many changes in the history of English, and so this is an important category to consider. This is especially true because our two reference accents differ on this a lot, as SSBE has lost all traces of historical R when not at the beginning of a syllable. Finally, weak vowels are like short vowels, except they can never appear in a stressed syllable and they can end a syllable.

Vowels In Standard Southern British English

From this point, we’ll reference lexical sets and the International Phonetic Alphabet quite a bit, so a little background or research on these topics will be helpful for following along.

Standard Southern British English has 19 distinct vowel phonemes. Here’s the full list, with their relevant lexical sets below:

/ɪ/ /e/ /æ/ /ʌ/ /ɒ/ /ʊ/ /iː/ /ɔː/ /uː/ /ɑː/ /aɪ/ /eɪ/ /ɔɪ/ /aʊ/ /əʊ/ /ɪə/ /ɛː/ /ɜː/ /ə/

Short vowels

Among SSBE’s short vowels, spellings vary pretty widely. The one thing that remains constant is the TRAP vowel, which is always spelled with a letter A. This is a reliable way to tell it apart from the STRUT vowel, which many English learners confuse it with.

Long vowels

Diphthongs

Here we can see more examples of how spelling is not a reliable indicator of how many vowel sounds English has. The same spelling can represent distinct vowel pronunciations, and in reverse, the same pronunciation can be represented by multiple spellings.

With historical /r/

As mentioned above, since SSBE lost all /r/s that were not before vowel sounds, all syllable-final /r/s are dropped in pronunciation too. This left a set of vowel sounds which are still written with the letter R in spelling, but have no remnant of the /r/ sound in them in this accent.

Weak vowel

The weak vowel is also known as a schwa, and it just so happens to be the most common vowel sound in English. It can be tricky to see at first because the knowledge of spelling often overrides our perception of a spoken sound. But once you become aware of it, you’ll notice it everywhere. 

Vowels In General American English

General American English has 21 distinct vowel phonemes. They are as follows:

/ɪ/ /ɛ/ /æ/ /ʌ/ /ʊ/ /iː/ /ɑː/ /uː/ /aɪ/ /eɪ/ /ɔɪ/ /aʊ/ /oʊ/ /ɪr/ /ɛr/ /ɔr/ /ɑr/ /ʊr/ /ɝ/ /ɚ/ /ə/

Short vowels

More or less the same as SSBE, GenAm’s system of short vowels differs only in that there is no difference between the sets TRAP and BATH, so the words “gas” and “grass” are perfect rhymes. Also, notice that the DRESS vowel is written with a different symbol in GenAm than in SSBE because the GenAm vowel tends to be much more open.

Long vowels

Diphthongs

GenAm’s distribution of diphthongs is identical to SSBE’s, but one minor difference is the transcription of the GOAT vowel: Here it starts with a much rounder vowel sound.

With historical /r/

Since GenAm has retained the /r/ sound in all positions, this subset of vowels is quite large. We transcribe all of them as a vowel plus /r/, except for NURSE which has its own special symbol, used to indicate an “R-colored vowel.” We can also think of the NURSE vowel in GenAm as a syllabic /r/. This means that we could say that there isn’t vowel sound at all in this word, and instead the /r/ makes up the syllable itself.

Weak vowels

Unlike SSBE, GenAm makes a distinction between these two sets since all historical /r/s are kept. For example, this means that the words “clear” and “idea” do not rhyme in GenAm.

Other Varieties Of English

As you can see, the details of these accents’ vowel sounds vary a bit, but the number of distinct sounds is not that different. Other accents of English will have some different phonemes, too, but the actual number of vowel sounds doesn’t change much.

Scottish English has one of the simpler vowel systems of modern English — it’s changed less over time compared to other varieties of English — but even it still has 20 distinct vowel phonemes. Australian English, for example, has more or less the same system as SSBE with 19 vowels, though the qualities of the vowel sounds differ somewhat.

So next time someone tries to tell you there are only five vowels in English, you can tell them otherwise!

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Vowel sounds and letters. How many are there in Russian?

Free introductory lesson in Russian

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Correct pronunciation of words is one of the components of beautiful and literate speech. To achieve this, you will first have to study the sounds themselves. In this article, we will figure out together what vowel sounds are, how many vowels are in the alphabet of the Russian language, and what sounds they can represent.

What are vowels and sounds

Vowel sounds are those sounds that we freely convey with our voice. Hence their name comes from: voice means "voice". When pronouncing, air exits through the mouth and does not create noise, and the position of the tongue and lips determines which vowel sound we will pronounce.

There are much fewer vowels in Russian than consonants. There are 6 of them in total: [a], [o], [i], [s], [y] and [e]. To understand whether a vowel sound is in front of you or not, try to sing it. For example:

• a-a-a ,

• woo

• s-s-s .

If it works, then the sound is a vowel. You can't do that with consonants.

There are more vowels than sounds - there are 10 of them: a, i, u, u, o, e, e, e, i, s . This difference is due to the fact that some of these letters can represent two sounds and are pronounced using a combination of a vowel and a consonant [y']. For example, in the word spruce the letter e two sounds are expressed - [y '] and [e]. Let's look at the table all the vowel sounds and the letters that represent them.

Demo lesson in Russian

Take the test at the introductory lesson and find out what topics separate you from the "five" in Russian.

How vowel sounds are related to syllables

Vowel sounds form syllables - sound segments of words that we pronounce with one breath. One syllable can be either a vowel with one or more consonants, or a vowel alone. There is even a rule by which syllables can be counted: how many vowels in a word - so many syllables.

For example, in the word journey there are 5 vowels: [u], [i], [e], [i] and [e]. This means that it has 5 syllables: p-te-she-stv-e .

Test yourself!

Count the number of syllables in the words: try on, tanner, well-groomed, care, prefix, capital, wet, invitation, orange .

Vowel sounds and stress

Now let's see what groups vowel sounds are divided into. Sometimes their pronunciation depends on whether the stress falls on them, that is, whether we single them out with our voice. So vowel sounds are divided into stressed and unstressed. Here are some examples:

Stress in Russian can fall on any of the existing vowel sounds. However, only 4 of them can be unstressed - these are [a], [i], [y] and [s]. In this position, we pronounce sounds weaker than under stress, because of which they can change qualities and sound differently.

Interestingly, the vowels [o] and [e] can only be stressed. There are only a couple of exceptions to this rule: for example, in words cocoa and canoe sounds [o] and [e] in an unstressed position.

How unstressed vowels are related to consonants

How an unstressed vowel sounds depends on the consonant that precedes it. Or rather, from its hardness or softness. If it is a hard consonant, it can be followed by unstressed vowels [y], [a] and [s]. When we talk about a soft consonant, it is followed by unstressed vowels [y] and [and].

Test yourself

It's time to find out if you now understand well what vowel sounds are in Russian. To do this, we have prepared tasks for self-examination.

Task 1

List all the vowels in these words:

Task 2

Name 5 words each in which the sounds [a], [i], [y] and [s] would be stressed.

Task 3

Name 5 words in which an unstressed vowel would come after a hard consonant, and 5 more words where it would follow a soft consonant.

Task 4

Count the number of syllables in the words below (don't forget to use the rule you learned at the beginning of the article!):

• weightless,

• sunrise,

• adventure,

• painter,

• perpetuate,

• pleasant,

• image,

• category,

• exciting,

• melting,

• snowflake.

The rules of phonetics help us to speak correctly, so it is important to master the topic of vowels well and avoid gaps in knowledge. If even after reading the article you still have questions on the topic, you can figure them out in the Russian language course at Skysmart. In online lessons, the teacher will help the student work out the theory and consolidate the result on non-boring tasks. So the student will be able to improve the quality of knowledge, and fall in love with the subject.

Russian cheat sheets for parents

All the rules for the Russian language at hand

Vowels and vowel sounds of the Russian language - diagram, table

In Russian there are 10 vowels, 6 vowels. e, e, o, u, s, e, u, i. Vowel sounds: [a], [o], [y], [e], [i], [s]. In the school curriculum, vowel sounds are indicated in the diagrams in red. In elementary grades, they explain: vowels are called so because they “voice”, they are pronounced “voiced”, while consonants got such a name because they “agree” with vowels.

Stressed and unstressed vowels

There are vowel sounds:

unstressed: in about yes [a], from y dak [y], l e juice [i].

It is correct to say "stressed syllable" and "unstressed syllable". Instead of "stress falls on a vowel" say "stress falls on a syllable with a vowel." However, in the literature there are formulations "stressed vowel" and "unstressed vowel".

Stressed vowels are in a strong position, they are pronounced with more force and intonation. Unstressed vowels are in a weak position, they are pronounced with less force and may be subject to change.

Note. The designation of the letter e in a weak position differs in different school programs. Above we showed the sound [and], in other school programs the designation [e] is found, in the institute program - [e ^and ] (e with an overtone and).

In Russian there are compound words with primary and secondary stress. In them, with a strong intonation, we highlight the main stress, with a weak intonation - a secondary one. For example, in the word foam blocks, the main stress falls on the syllable with the letter o, the secondary stress on the syllable with the letter e.

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