The Sounds of English and Their Representation

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 617.

In English, there is no one-to-one relation between the system of writing and the system of pronunciation. The alphabet which we use to write English has 26 letters but in (Standard British) English there are approximately 44 speach sounds. The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. To represent the basic sound of spoken languages linguists use a set of phonetic symbols called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The chart below contains all of the IPA symbols used to represent the sounds of the English language. This is the standard set of phonemic symbols for English (RP and similar accents).

p b t d k g f v s z m n h l r w j

The colon / : / represents longer duration in pronunciation and is found in long vowels such as / i: /, / a: /, / u:/, etc.
Classifying the Vowels Sounds of English

The classifcation of vowels is based on four major aspects:

1. Tongue height - according to the vertical position of the tongue (high vowels, also referred to as close; low vowels, also referred to as open; intermediate - close-mid and open-mid)
2. Frontness vs. backness of the tongue - according to the horizontal position of the highest part of the tongue.
3. Lip rounding - whether the lips are rounded (O-shape) or spread (no rounding) when the sound is being made.
4. Tenseness of the articulators - refers to the amount of muscular tension around the mouth when creating vowel sounds. Tense and lax are used to describe muscular tension.

	Front vowels (tongue body is pushed forward)	Central vowels (tongue body is neutral)	Back vowels (tongue body is pulled back)
High/close vowels (tongue body is raised)	/ / see / / sit		/ / boot / / book
Mid vowels (tongue body is intermediate)	/e/ bait* / / bet	/ / sofa**, / / bird	/o/ boat* / / bought***
Low/open vowels (tongue body is lowered)	/ / bat	/ / under**	/ / father, / / sock(BrE)

*In some American accents (especially Californian English), vowel sounds in words such as bait, gate, pane and boat, coat, note are not consider diphthongs. American phonologists often class them as tense monophthongs (/e/ and /o/).
**/ / is used in unstressed syllables, while / / is in stressed syllables. The vowel / / used to be a back vowel, and the symbol was chosen for this reason. This is no longer a back vowel, but a central one.
***A considerable amount of Americans don't have the deep / / in their vocabulary, they pronouce bought, ball, law with the deep / / sound.