Write the vowels

See Also

What is a diphthong?The top 10 spelling rulesThe top 20 misspelled wordsHow to improve your English spellingWhat is a schwa vowel?What is assonance?What is consonance?Using "an" or "a" with consonantsDrag-and-drop test on the types of syllableGlossary of grammatical terms

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Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue. In English it is important to know that there is a difference between a vowel sound and a [letter] in the [alphabet]. In English there are five vowel letters in the alphabet.

The sounds of American English are written with letters in the English alphabet, as either vowels or consonants. All English words are written with vowel letters in them.

These letters are vowels in English:

A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes W and Y.

It is said that Y is "sometimes" a vowel, because the letter Y represents both vowel and consonant sounds. In the words cry, sky, fly, my and why, letter Y represents the vowel sound /aɪ/. In words like myth and synchronize, Y represents the vowel sound /ɪ/. In words like only, quickly, and folly, Y represents the vowel sound /i/.

It can also be a consonant sound called a glide as in the beginning of these words: yellow, yacht, yam, yesterday. Y is a consonant about 2.5% of the time, and a vowel about 97.5% of the time.^[1]

The letter W can sometimes be the second part of a vowel sound as in words like such as cow, bow, or how. In these words the vowel has the sound of /aʊ/. The letter W can be used as a consonant sound at the beginning of in the words when, where, wet. In some languages, like Welsh, the letter W represents the vowel sound /ʊ/, like cwm (a kind of valley).

In written English the six vowel letters are used to represent the 13-15 vowel sounds (depending on the variety) in English.^[2] This means there are many more vowel sounds than letters in the English alphabet, and the English spelling systems doesn't always help us figure out what the English sounds are. This can be confusing.

• The rest of the letters of the alphabet are consonants:

B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, and Z.

Simple vowels are called monophthongs. The letters, like /ɪ/, are the IPA letters for each vowel sound in English. (The IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet). In the IPA, each symbol represents a different sound, so using the IPA is helpful in pronouncing words.

Common monophthongs in English (these are for General American English) include:

• /i/ as in police, feet, eat, and silly
• /ɪ/ as in it, sit, kick, myth and bitter
• /ɛ/ as in end, bet, less, and letter
• /æ/ as in at, apple, fat, and matter
• /u/ as in cool, tune, soup, and kung fu,
• /ʊ/ as in cook, should, pudding, foot, and rook
• /ʌ/ as in bus, blood, come, and up
• /ə/ as in kingdom, photography, philosophy, ketchup, and hundred
• /ɚ/ as in butter, collar, flavor, firm, and burst
• /ɔ/ as in all, fought, hot, and bot
• /ɑ/ as in father, walk, arm, heart, wasp, lager, envelope and aardvark

Diphthongs are a combination of two different vowel sounds, one vowel sounds turns into another sound as you say them. If you pronounce the words below slowly, you can hear the two vowel sounds of the diphthongs.

Common diphthongs in English include:

• /eɪ/ as in ate, reign, vain, flavor, slay, and convey
• /oʊ/ as in toe, row, go, boat, mode, and chateau
• /aɪ/ as in eye, I, pie, cry, cypher, climb, lime, light, kayak, Thai, and height
• /aʊ/ as in loud, house, cow, about, Daoism, and Macau
• /oɪ/ as in boy, moist, and Freud

Like other languages, there are many dialects of English, and different dialects often use different vowel sounds. But the IPA symbols can tell us which vowel sound a dialects uses. For example, some American English speakers differentiate between the vowels in the words cot and caught, while in other dialects these words are homophones. People who study the differences between the dialects of English often study the different way vowel sounds are pronounced.

The difference between the way English is spelled and the way the words are pronounced came about because all languages change, so spoken English changes, but the spelling system does not.

The study of speech sounds is called phonetics.

• Orthography
• Dialect
• Diphthong

1. ↑ Edward Fry (2004). "Phonics: A Large Phoneme-Grapheme Frequency Count Revised". Journal of Literacy Research. 36 (1): 85–98. doi:10.1207/s15548430jlr3601_5. S2CID 146226795.
2. ↑ Crystal, David 1995. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language. Cambridge. p237

Vowel sounds and letters.

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The correct pronunciation of words is one of the components of a 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 expresses two sounds - [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.

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In linguistics there are concepts of "sound" and "letter". This article presents the table "Consonants and vowels", as well as tables that display which sounds represent certain letters.

Vowels and consonants

There are 33 letters in Russian: 10 vowels, 21 consonants, as well as ъ and ь. Separately vowels and separately consonants will be demonstrated by the table of consonants and vowels below:

There are fewer letters in Russian than sounds: there are 33 letters and 42 sounds.

Vowel sounds and letters

The vowels of the Russian alphabet represent only 6 sounds:

As can be seen from the table, the sounds [and], [s] are indicated by the letters and, s, the remaining sounds are indicated by two letters at once. Hence there is a discrepancy between the number of vowels and sounds.

The letters e, e, u, i, located after the consonants, indicate the softness of the consonant. The consonant is soft, not the vowel, so it is incorrect to pronounce the following phrases: “soft vowels” or “hard vowels”. The vowels are not soft or hard, they can only indicate softness.

Consonants and letters

All consonants, of which there are 21, represent 36 sounds. All letters and sounds are displayed in the following table:

As can be seen from the table, the letters zh, ts and sh denote only hard consonants, the letters y, h, u only denote soft consonants, and the remaining 15 letters can denote both soft and hard consonants.

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