TOPIC 7

PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE I: VOWELS.

PHONETIC SYMBOLS. STRONG AND WEAK FORMS. DIPHTONGS.
COMPARISON WITH THE SPANISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

OUTLINE

1. INTRODUCTION
2. MAIN CONSIDERATIONS
2.1. PHONETICS/PHONOLOGY
2.2. VOWELS/CONSONANTS
3. VOWEL CLASSIFICATION
3.1. VOWEL LENGTH/QUALITY
3.2. POSITION OF THE SOFT PALATE
3.3. POSITION OF THE TONGUE
3.4. POSITION OF THE LIPS
3.5. TENSE VS LAX
3.6. WEAK VS STRONG
4. PHONETIC SYMBOLS AND SPELLING

4.1. /iː/ 4.7. /ʌ/

4.2. /I/ 4.8. /ɒ/
4.3. /e/ 4.9. /ɔː/
4.4. /ɜ:/ 4.10. /uː/
4.5. /æ/ 4.11. /ʊ/
4.6. /ɑː/ 4.12. /ə/

5. DIPHTONGS
5.1. CLOSING
5.2. CENTRING
6. SPANISH AND VALENCIAN VS ENGLISH VOCALIC SYSTEM
7. CONCLUSION
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 1. INTRODUCTION

One of the basic … that differentiates languages and defines them is their pronunciation, the
way each language sounds. Spanish people say that one of the most difficult parts of English is
its pronunciation, especially that of vowels. English pronunciation is not always predictable
from the spelling forms that you see. Words that look the same might have very different
pronunciations. For example, cough, tough, through, bough, though, borough all end
in ough but all have a different British English pronunciation.

When we learn a new language, we try to equate new sounds with the ones from our mother
tongue. Spanish students have difficulties in mastering English sounds and differentiating
those which sound similar to them because of the non-existence of those exact sounds in our
vocalic system. For that reason, this topic is aimed at explaining in detail the vocalic system of
the English language, the phonetic symbols that represent it and their different realizations or
spellings.

2. MAIN CONSIDERATIONS
2.1. PHONETICS / PHONOLOGY

Linguistically speaking, we may establish a distinction between the terms phonetics and
phonology.

On the one hand, phonetics deals with characteristics of the sounds themselves without any
reference to their function. Since the phonetic unit is the sound, it formulates methods of
description and classification of the sound types which occur in speech:

 Articulatory: how they are produced in vocal tract.

 Acoustic: physical properties.
 Auditory: how they are perceived.

On the contrary, phonology deals with phonemes (the smallest distinctive unit of speech
which may differ according to the phonetic environment in which it occurs). Thus, phonology
involves the study of the concrete phonetic characteristics within the context of a specific
language (English or Spanish phonemes, for example):
  How particular sounds (vowels, consonants) contrast to form an integrated system.
 How that system differs from one another.
 The nature and use of prosodic features like pitch, stress and length.

2.2. VOWELS / CONSONANTS

Celce-Murcia (2001) claims that defining vowel sounds and describing their phonetic
properties is not as simple a matter as naming the five orthographic vowels (a, e, i, o, u). In
fact, when we begin to examine the vowel sounds of English more scientifically, we find that
there are at least 12 distinct vowel sounds.

Vowel sounds differ from their consonant counterparts in that the airstream is allowed to
escape from the mouth in an unobstructed manner, without any interruption. There is no
contact of the articulators as there is in the production of consonant sounds, and this is the
reason why the classification of vowels is not so clear-cut as that of consonants.

3. VOWEL CLASSIFICATION

Grimson’s system of phonetic transcription is the most widely phonetic analysis used in the
field of teaching English pronunciation. He distinguishes 20 phonetic realizations of the vowel
phonemes:

 7 short vowels
 5 long vowels
 8 diphtongs

Vowel sounds can be distinguished from each other by several features related to the position
of the main organs responsible for the resonators, such as the soft palate, tongue and lips.

Therefore, a common classification must describe the position of the articulatory organs
according to:

1. Vowel quality
2. The position of the tongue
3. The position of the soft palate
 4. The position of the lips

As well as other relevant characteristics such as:

5. Tense versus lax vowels

6. Weak and strong forms

3.1. VOWEL QUALITY OR VOWEL LENGTH

Vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical

measurement is duration.

Long vowels Short vowels

/iː/ see, cream /æ/ cat /ʊ/ bull
/ɑː/ farm /e/ pet /ʌ/ cut, but
/ɜ:/ birth, bird /ɪ/ birth, bird /ə/ about
/ɔː/ brought /ɒ/ knot
/u:/ boom

3.2. THE POSITION OF THE SOFT PALATE

We deal both with the nasal and oral cavity. Vowels are then classified as oral vowels if the
soft palate is raised, so that the air is forced to go out only through the mouth, and nasal
vowels if the soft palate is lowered, so that the air can pass through the nose as well as
through the mouth. The vowels pronounced this way are always in the environment of a nasal
consonant as in the word “sing”.

3.3. THE POSITION OF THE TONGUE

Vowel sounds can be distinguished from each other by the degree of raising of the tongue, and
by which part of the tongue is raised. Accordingly, in relation with the raising of the tongue,
we distinguish four degrees:

Close vowels (the tongue is held as high as possible without touching the roof of the
mouth) /iː/ /uː/
 Semi-close vowels (the tongue is about one third of the distance from close to
open) /ɔː/ /ɪ/ /ʊ/
Mid vowels (the tongue is in the middle) /ɜ:/ /ə/ /e/
Semi-open vowels (the tongue is about two thirds of the distance from close to
open) /ʌ/ /ɒ/
Open vowels (the tongue is as low as possible) /ɑː/ /æ/

With respect to the part of the tongue raised, we distinguish three types:

Front vowels (the front of the tongue moves towards the hard palate) /iː/ /e/ /æ/
Central vowels (the central art of the tongue is raised) /ɜ:/ /ə/ /ɪ/ /ʊ/ /ʌ/
Back vowels (the back of the tongue is raised to the soft palate) /ɑː/ /ɔː/ /uː/ /ɒ/

3.4. THE POSITION OF THE LIPS

According to Grimson (1980), another factor that characterizes the production of vowel
sounds is lip position, which can be described as rounded, spread and neutral.

Rounded vowels (drawn together with a round opening) /ɔː/ /ɒ/ /ʊ/ /uː/
Spread vowels (characterized by lips together) /iː/ /e/ /ɜ:/ /ɪ/ /ʌ/ /æ/ /ɑː/
Neutral vowels (included by Celce-Murcia, 2021) /ə/

3.5. TENSE VERSUS LAX VOWELS

Tense vowels are articulated with more muscle tension than lax vowels. This muscle tension
serves to stretch the articulation of tense vowel sounds to more extreme positions of the
mouth, making them less centered. Often, tense vowels are accompanied by a glide, which is
defined as a slight diphtongization.

On the contrary, to produce lax vowels the tongue is supposed to be held loosely, and the jaw
also drops slightly. Moreover, the tongue moves towards the central position of the mouth.

Tense vowels: /iː/ /e/ /ɒ/ /uː/

Lax vowels: /ɜ:/ /ɪ/ /ʌ/ /æ/ /ɑː/ /ə/ /ɔː/ /ʊ/
 3.6. WEAK VERSUS STRONG FORMS

English is a stress-accent language, where content and function words may be stressed or
unstressed (weak or strong), both at word and sentence level. Besides, we deal with
reductions of unaccented vowels to schwa.

Since content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) generally retain some measure of qualitative
prominence even when no pitch prominence is associated with them, we will concentrate on
weak and strong forms regarding function words (prepositions, articles) since they are
usually pronounced in English with their weak form. Besides, function words have two or
more qualitative patterns according to whether they are stressed (special situations or
isolated) or unstressed (the normal case).

Thus, weak forms are related to three main features in English.

 Reduction of length: depending of the role in the sentence.

 Obscuration of vowels: mainly towards schwa but also towards short /u/ and /i/.
 Elision in connected speech

Strong forms:

 When it occurs at the end of a sentence, as in reduced sentences, short answers, etc.:
Where are you from?/ Tom does / Yes, I do.
 When a function word is in opposition to another word so as to establish a clarification
of meaning: I laugh with him, not at him.
 When a function word is given special stress for emphasis purposes: You must do it.

Some examples are:

 but: strong /bʌt/, weak /bət/

 your: strong /jɔː/, weak /jə/ (before consonant) /jər/ (before vowel)
 of: /ɒv/ strong, /ə/ weak (before consonant) /əv/ (before vowel)
 4. PHONETIC SYMBOLS AND SPELLING

According to the previous classification according to several factors, here follows a vowel
quadrant:

4.1. /iː/

ee see, bee i police

ea sea, pea, beat ey key
ie yield, field eo people
e seize ay quay

4.2. /I/

i rich a village ay Monday

y city o women ai fountain, mountain
e pretty u busy ie ladies

4.3. /e/

e egg ea realm, meant

a any, many ei leisure
eo leopard
4.4. /ɜ:/
 w+or word er serve
our scourge ur fur
ir bird ear earth

4.5. /æ/

a hat, cap, cash

4.6. /ɑː/

a pass er clerk
ea
ar art heart
r
au aunt al calm

4.7. /ʌ/

o come ou trough
oo blood, flood oe does
u cut, sun

4.8. /ɒ/

o sorry ou cough
au because ow knowledge
a what

4.9. /ɔː/

aw law a all oa hoarse

ou bought or horse our pour
au taught oor door oa broad
4.10. /uː/

o who ou soup oe shoe

oo fool ui fruit ew few
 u rude ue blue

4.11. /ʊ/

o woman u full
oo good ou could

4.12. /ə/
 There is no regular character to represent de schwa.
 It appears in most unstressed syllables.
 It’s the most common vowel to appear in English.

5. DIPHTHONGS

A diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another, and the whole glide acts like one of the long,
simple vowels. All the diphthongs in English are falling, which means that the first element
carries all the vocalic strength when the diphthong is pronounced, and the second element is
the point in the direction of which the glide is made, and therefore, it is not pronounced so
loud as the first part.

5.1. CLOSING

The second element is closed (/i:/, /u:/)

 /ei/ take, train, flame, day, play, great

 /ai/ die, dye, bike, try, fine, high, height
 /oi/ toy, voice
 /au/ house, cow, brown
 /əu/ no, so, go, toe, boat, coat, road, though, snow, know
5.2. CENTRING

The second element is central (/ə/)

 /iə/ beer, ear, idea, weird, here

  /eə/ wear, bear, share, hair
 /uə/ sure, tour, poor, your

6. SPANISH AND VALENCIAN VS ENGLISH VOCALIC SYSTEM

In Spanish, there are 5 vowels and there is no long or short distinction between them. In
Valencian, we have two more vocalic sounds (“open e” and “open o”).

This chart shows Spanish vowels and their different realizations in English:

Spanish vowels Realizations in English Minimal pairs

/a/ /ʌ/, /æ/, /ɑː/ cut-cat, come-calm
/e/* /e/, /ɜ:/ bed-bird / bad-bird
/i/** /i:/, / ɪ/ live-leave
/o/ /ɒ/ , /ɔː/ short-shot
/u/*** /ʊ/, /uː/ full-fool

*Like the English /e/, but more tense and close.

**Like /i:/ in an unstressed position.

***Longer than /ʊ/, but shorter than /u:/.

7. CONCLUSION

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY