2018-02-05 Pronunciation: vowels and consonants

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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Levels of Pronunciation:
- individual consonant and vowel sounds
- putting individual sounds together into syllables
- sounds and syllable stress in full words
- word stress, intonation and reduction in thought groups
- combining thought groups into full sentences and longer speech
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How many vowel sounds does American English have?
- about 15
The “basic” vowels can be “long” or “short”.
Short vowels are usually spelled with just that vowel letter.
short A: bat, rat, hat, mad, sad, had
short E: bet, let, met, bed, red/read (past), head, dead, said
short I: bit, lit, lip, hit, flip, ship, it, gym
short O: bot, hop, drop, rot, God, got, mop, cot
short U: but, cut, gun, putt, run, sun, son, done, love, blood, punch
(schwa /ə/: basically the unstressed version of short U - about, photograph)
Long vowels are the names of the letters, but usually spelled with two vowel letters.
long A: may, paid, rate, weight, gate, state, made/maid
long E: peace/piece, peer, heat, hear, see, keep, meet, key, sheep
long I: write/rite/wright/right, I, shine, fine, find
long O: boat, both, mode, fold, stone, poor/pour, coat
long U: cute, pure, huge, rude, zoo, mood, moon, soon, pool
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There are also other vowels:
/ʊ/: good, wood, foot, look, book, could, would, should
/ɔ/: law, awe, Austria, bought, taught, ball, boss, dog, caught
/aw/: brown, out, now, loud, sound
/oy/: boy, toy, join, coin
/ɚ/: bird, were, curve, heard
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The most difficult vowels might be the ones in bat, bet, and bit. (or pan, pen, and pin)
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How many consonants do we have in English?
Handout p. 14 has a list of 24.
Consonants 1 through 16 are in voiceless/voiced pairs.
17-19 are nasal sounds (the sound goes through your nose)