Vowel Sounds Overview

This post gives a short overview of the vowel sounds in British English.  I use a system called SPELL to represent the individual sounds.


Short vowels

Three-letter words in English are very predictable.

The word “cat” contains three sounds: c, a, and t

“Red” is r, e, d

“Dog” is d, o, g

“Big” is b, i, g

And “bus” is b, u, s

It doesn't look like we need a special way to represent sound with funny symbols. We can just use the alphabet, can’t we?

Yes… and no.

The word “push”, for example, causes a problem. The vowel sound is a different (deeper) sound than the u in “bus”. If we want to show that they are different, we need some kind of symbol.

Let’s define u as the deeper sound.

So “push” is p, u, sh

That means that we have 6 short vowel sounds but only 5 letters.

Our short vowel sounds then are a, e, i, o, u, u

Click here for more on the short sounds


Long vowels

These are the vowel sounds that we hear when we say the alphabet.

A     cake      caek

E      teeth     teeth

I       kite        kiyt

O      boat      boet

U      tune      tyuun

In written English, we can write the same sound in different ways, using a combination of two or more letters. For example, the words ‘male’ and ‘mail’ are pronounced in exactly the same way.

The sound-symbols that I use for these long vowel sounds are a combination of two letters, but I always use the same two letters to represent each sound.

I will write them as: ae, ee, iy, oe, uu.

So the sound of both “male” and “mail” is mael.

Notice that the name of the letter of the alphabet, U, is actually pronounced yuu. It begins with the consonant sound, y.

The combination of ‘u’ and ‘e’ in “tune” also makes yuu:

      the word is made from the sounds: t, y, uu and n

However, the combination of ‘u’ and ‘e’ in “flute” makes uu:

      the word is made from the sounds: f, l, uu and t (there is no y sound)

There is no rule for this. Sometimes there’s a y; sometimes there isn’t.

Click here for more on the long sounds


Cowboy vowels

There are two ‘cowboy’ vowel sounds, which, in English, are written using a combination of letters. Here are some examples:

cow      cŏ
boy       boy

sound   sŏnd

coin      coyn

We use a special symbol, ŏ, to represent the vowel sound in “cow” and "sound" because the letter combinations 'ow' and 'ou' don’t always make that sound. For example, in the word  “town”, ‘ow’ makes the sound ŏ but in the word “show”, ‘ow’ makes the sound oe.

We use oy to represent the vowel sound in boy and coin.

Click here for more on the cowboy vowels


The R-vowels

There are three different vowel sounds that are often written using a combination of a vowel and the letter ‘r’. Here are some examples:

purple      pūrp~l
car           cār
door         dōr

In these words, the letter ‘r’ is part of the vowel sound. It is not pronounced as a consonant sound (in British English).

I will write these sounds ūr, ār and ōr.

Notice that the vowel sound ūr can be spelt in three different ways:

purple      pūrp~l
person     pūrs~n
girl           gūrl

The first vowel sound in the words “person”, “girl” and “purple” is exactly the same: ūr.

Click here for more on the R-vowels


The lazy vowel

Some vowels make a very weak, lazy sound. This happens when they are part of an unstressed syllable. Here are some examples:

alive        ~liyv
waiter      waet~
person     pūrs~n
pilot         piyl~t

I will write ~ for this sound. We don’t want it to look very much like a letter because it is so relaxed that it’s almost not there!

Click here for more on the lazy vowel


The Sliders

There are five more vowel sounds that native speakers of English may think of as individual sounds, although they are really combinations of the sounds I have already introduced. Here are some examples:

beer      bee~
fire        fiy~
cure       cyuu~
flour      flŏ~
chair      che~

For each of these sounds, we slide from one sound to another.

I will write them: ee~, iy~, uu~, ŏ~ and e~

Click here for more on the sliders


So those are the vowel sounds of English. If you’re not sure how they sound, go to the Individual Vowel Sounds posts in the Vowels Menu where you can listen to them one by one.

Pronunciation 10: Spelling Tables... and Chameleons!

In the last pronunciation post, we looked at the spellings with root letter A. This is part of 'standard spelling', which is largely predictable and rational.

Some letter combinations are commonly pronounced in more than one way but remain predictable. I will label these in green and refer to them as chameleons.

Remember that you are not expected to learn all of this in an instant. The idea is to make a connection between what a word looks like and what it sounds like.

Here are the five spelling tables for each root letter, A, E, I, O and U.

Root letter A

From the table, you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling a: 'a'.
• there are four standard ways of spelling ae: 'ae', 'ai', 'ay' and 'ei'. The last of these is a chameleon*
• there is only one standard way of spelling ār: 'ar'.
• there are three standard ways of spelling e~: 'air', 'are' and 'eir'.

*'ei' is a chameleon because it can also make the sounds ee and iy.

Root letter E

From the table, you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling the sound e : 'e' 
• there are 6 standard ways of spelling ee: 'ee', 'ea', 'ey', 'ie', 'y' and 'ei'. The last three are chameleons* 
• there are three standard ways of spelling ūr, only one of which is written 'er' ('er' = 'ir' = 'ur') 
• there are three standard ways of spelling ee~: 'ear', 'eer', 'ere' 

*'ie' is a chameleon because it can also make the sound iy
*'y' is a chameleon because it can also make the sound iy
*'ei' is a chameleon because it can also make the sounds ae and iy

Root letter I

From the table, you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling the sound i : 'i' 
• there are three standard ways of spelling iy: 'ie', 'y' and 'ei', all of which are chameleons* 
• there are three standard ways of spelling ūr, only one of which is written 'ir' ('er' = 'ir' = 'ur') 
• there is one standard way of spelling iy~: 'ire' 

*'ie' is a chameleon because it can also make the sound ee
*'y' is a chameleon because it can also make the sound ee
*'ei' is a chameleon because it can also make the sounds ae and ee


Root letter O

From the table, you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling o: 'o' 
• there are three standard ways of spelling oe: 'oa', 'oe' and 'ow', the last of which is a chameleon* 
• there are seven standard ways of spelling ōr: 'or', 'au', 'aw', 'oar', 'oor', 'ore' and 'our', the last of which is a chameleon*
• there are two standard ways of spelling oy: 'oi' and 'oy'. 
• there are two standard ways of spelling ŏ: 'ou' and 'ow', the last of which is a chameleon* 
• there is one standard way of spelling ŏ~: 'our', which is a chameleon*

*'ow' is a chameleon because it makes the sounds ŏ and oe
*'our' is a chameleon because it makes the sounds ŏ~ and ōr

Root letter U

From the table, you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling u: 'u', which is a chameleon*
• there are two standard ways of spelling u: 'u', and 'oo', which are both chameleons*
• there are five standard ways of spelling uu: 'ue', 'ui', 'eu', 'ew' and 'oo', the last of which is a chameleon*
• there are three standard ways of spelling ūr, only one of which is written 'ur' ('er' = 'ir' = 'ur')
• there are two standard ways of spelling uu~: 'ure' and 'eur'

*'u' is a chameleon because it makes the sounds u and u

*'oo' is a chameleon because it makes the sounds u and uu

So, for 21 vowel sounds, we had 45 letter combinations, 7 of which were chameleons.

After all that, I think I feel a song coming on!

Pronunciation 9: Standard Spelling and How It Works!

If we go back to the vowel sound table, you'll remember that each column has a letter at the top. This is the root letter and it is associated with all of the sounds in that column.








Let's look at root letter A.

The short sounds, in row 1, are written using the root letter on its own, surrounded by consonants.

For example, in the word 'cat', there is one vowel, on its own, so the sound is a.

When two vowels are next to each other, we usually get the long sound in row 2. Also, if vowels are separated by only one consonant, we also get the long sound.

For example, in the word 'nail', there are two vowels next to each other. In the word 'cake', there are two vowels separated by only one consonant. In both cases, the first of the two vowels is 'a', and we get the long sound, ae.

The vowel sound in 'nail' and 'cake' is the same but it is written in different ways. The combination 'ai' spells the sound ae, and the combination 'ae' (here separated with a 'k') also spells the sound ae.

So how do we know which sound a particular combination makes? Well, you can learn them. This is the spelling table for Root Letter A.

You can see that another spelling of the ae sound is 'ay', as in 'pay'. Most of the spellings start with the root letter.

Now, you will notice there is one spelling of ae that doesn't use the root letter, and that is 'ei'. This is a surprise but it is still one way to spell the ae sound.

Unfortunately, the same combination, 'ei' sometimes makes an ee in other words, such as 'receive', and sometimes an iy, as it does in 'poltergeist'. Letter combinations like this that can make different sounds will be highlighted in green and I will refer to them as chameleons.


From the table for Root letter A you can see that:

• there is one standard way of spelling a: 'a'.
• there are four standard ways of spelling ae: 'ae', 'ai', 'ay' and 'ei'.
• there is only one standard way of spelling ār: 'ar'.
• there are three standard ways of spelling e~: 'air', 'are' and 'eir'.

Note that the sound e~ is included under Root letter A because it is usually associated with the letter, 'a'. Spelling e~ 'are' or 'air' is much more common than spelling it 'eir'.

Also, I can hear you complaining that the word 'are' is not actually pronounced e~, and is in fact pronounced ār. You are right, of course. But, my friends, the word 'are' is non-standard spelling! The words 'care', 'dare', 'fare', 'hare', 'mare', 'rare', 'ware', 'share', 'spare' and 'stare' are all pronounced e~, like the good, honest, standard words that they are!

In the next pronunciation post, we'll look at the spelling tables for each of the root letters, A, E, I, O and U.

Pronunciation 8: Writing and Sound

In the previous pronunciation post, we reviewed the vowel sounds. Now let's think about how they are related to how we write words. I'm going to make a distinction between two types of words: 'standard spelling' and 'non-standard spelling'.

Let's look at some examples:

Sound	Standard Spelling	Non-standard Spelling
hat	hat
hed		head
scārf	scarf
coet	coat
lārf		laugh
ruum	room
cuk	cook
blud		blood

Standard Spelling

'scarf' is standard spelling but 'laugh' is not

'Standard spelling' is predictable, and in some cases, you will be able to pronounce a written word just by looking at it.

For example, the words 'hat', 'scarf' and 'coat' are totally predictable. If you see the written words, you can pronounce them, if you know that 'a' makes an a sound, 'ar' makes an ār sound and 'oa' makes an oe sound.

Maybe 'oa' doesn't make an oe sound in your language, but it does in English. It's predictable, so it's standard spelling.

There are other situations where you see a word and you don't know for certain how it is pronounced. The pronunciation here may still be predictable: perhaps we have two possibilities instead of one.

For example, in standard spelling, the letter combination 'oo' either makes an uu sound or an u sound. So the word 'room' could logically be pronounced ruum or rum, and the word 'cook', could be cuuk or cuk.

But 'room' is ruum and 'cook' is cuk. There is no way of knowing for certain until you hear the word being used, but there were only two possibilities to begin with. You have a 50/50 chance of guessing the right one.

This is still classified as 'standard spelling.'

(Actually, depending on where they live, some people say rum for 'room' and others say cuuk for 'cook'.)


Non-standard Spelling

'cook' and 'room' are standard spelling but 'blood' is not

Non-standard Spelling' is not easily predictable, and it is hard to find any rules at all.

The words 'head', 'laugh' and 'blood' are all non-standard. The way they are written doesn't match the way we say them. Why don't we write 'hed', 'larf', and 'blud'? That would be logical, right?

Or why don't we pronounce them, heed, lōr and bluud (or blud)?

Sorry, this is the way it is with non-standard spelling. On the positive side, when you start to group words together in families, you will start to see patterns. We will deal with this in later posts.


Let's stick with the standard stuff for now... in the next post we'll talk about how to understand the relationship between standard spelling and sounds.

Pronunciation 7: Vowel Sounds Summary

In the first six posts in the pronunciation section, we have been defining the vowel sounds in English. Below are all of the vowel sounds together in a table. You should spend plenty of time trying to pronounce these sounds clearly. If you don't, people will not understand you.

This system of notation is called SPELL. It helps to make a connection
between the sounds in English and the letters you need to write them.

Let me talk you through the table.

In row zero, we have the names of the letters, A, E, I, O and U. Each letter is associated with a number of sounds, which are given in the yellow part of the table.

In row 1, we have the short sounds, a, e, i, o, u, u.
Click here for more information.

In row 2, we have the long sounds, ae, ee, iy, oe, uu.
Click here for more information.

Row 3 only has two sounds, the cowboy vowels: ŏ and oy.
Click here for more information.

In row 4, we have the R-vowels, three sounds, ār, ōr and ūr.
   ūr appears in three columns because it is associated with three different letter

    combinations - 'er', 'ir' and 'ur' - but it is only one sound. So ‘person’, ‘shirt’ and ‘hurt’

    all contain the same sound, ūr
Click here for more information.

In row 5, we have the lazy vowel, which is the unstressed vowel sound, ~ and the most common sound in the English language. It's lazy because it's very relaxed - you don't need to make a shape with your mouth -  it's almost not there.
Click here for more information.

So, those are all of the basic vowel sounds.

Row 6, in grey, is a bit different. These sounds are combinations of vowel sounds that we have already defined. But we're going to give them a name anyway: the sliders. They are made by sliding from one vowel sound to the lazy vowel ~.

They are... e~, ee~, iy~, ŏ~ and uu~.
Each one is associated with a letter and is placed in that column in the table.

The e~ slider is a little unusual. It is a combination of the sounds e and ~ but has jumped over into the A column. This means that it is usually associated with an A: for example, in the word, 'airfare' (e~fe~)
Click here for more information.

So, that's the summary of the vowel sounds. Now that we know what they are, let's find out how we can relate them to written English.

Pronunciation 5: The Lazy Vowel

After all the talk of short vowels, long vowels, cowboys and R-vowels, we have one more vowel sound left: the lazy vowel. It's lazy because it's almost nothing. It's the laziest sound that anyone could make.

I'm going to say the words 'about', 'alive' and 'away'. Does the first syllable sound like an a sound or something different?



If you said 'something different', you'd be right! This is the lazy vowel, ~.
It looks like an "almost nothing" sound, and it is.

Because it's so lazy, you don't have to try very hard when you say it. In fact, if you try too hard, you will make the wrong sound. You have to imagine that you're a teenager and that you don't want to try.

The lazy vowel makes it easier for us to talk quickly. It is not associated with any particular letter. Instead, we use it to replace other unstressed vowel sounds. That's why it's lazy. We don't want to pronounce every vowel clearly. We just want to relax.

Although I've been calling it 'lazy', you mustn't think that it's a 'lazy' form of English. This is simply how to speak British English.

So when do we use it?

Well, above, I gave you three words starting with the letter 'a' but where the stress falls on the second syllable. So unstressed 'a' is pronounced as the lazy vowel, ~.

about       ~bŏt
alive        ~liyv
away       ~wae
above      ~buv

Here, we'll look at some other common examples; I'll go into more detail in later posts.

Let's think about words that end in 'er'. When it's stressed, 'er' is pronounced ūr, but most English words ending in 'er' are not stressed on the last syllable.

So, instead, we just say, ~.

teacher        teech~
jumper         jump~
better           bet~
under           und~

Words that end in 'or' do the same thing. When it's stressed, 'or' is pronounced ōr, but most English words are not stressed on the last syllable, so we just say, ~.

doctor       doct~
director     diyrect~
major        maej~

Words that end in 'ar' and 'ur', are less common, but do the same. We just say, ~.

altar          olt~
lemur        leem~

(Words don't usually end in unstressed 'ir'.)

Words that end in 'a' do the same. We just say, ~.

panda        pand~
agenda      ~jend~
idea           iydee~

Words that end in 're' do the same. We just say, ~.

metre        meet~
theatre      thee~t~
sabre        saeb~

What's a sabre? The same as a saber, of course. Words that end 're' in British English are spelt 'er' in US English, but this makes no difference to how they're pronounced.

Here are all of the words I've just mentioned:




Anyway, that's your first taste of the lazy vowel. It's not much of a vowel but it will be back again and again and again and again and again and again

- - - - -

Note: Just in case you've seen it before, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, they call it the 'schwa', which is represented with an upside-down e: ə. Remember, I'm not using that system because my students don't like it, and neither do I. So, for us, it's the lazy vowel, ~.

Next: Vowel Sounds 6: The Sliders

Pronunciation 4: The R-vowels

So far we have 13 vowel sounds.
Firstly, the six 'short vowels' (a, e, i, o, ū, u)
Then five 'long vowels' (ae, ee, iy, oe, uu)
And in the previous post, the two 'cowboys' (ŏ, oy)

Four more to go, so let's look at three of them!

We are going to call these 3 sounds the “R-vowels” because the letter 'r' interacts with the letters a, e, i, o and u to make new vowel sounds. In British English, the 'r' doesn't make a consonant sound in these interactions.

The R-vowels are hard and long, and again, it's a good idea to think of some simple words that contain them, to use as a reference.

Car, 2 doors, surfboard

You probably know how to pronounce 'car', which gives us the sound ār

And a car has at least 2 doors and probably more, which gives us ōr
Fortunately, the combinations 'er', 'ir' and 'ur' all make the same sound, which is the ūr in 'surfboard'.

So because there are only 3 R-vowel sounds, we can get them all into one picture.




Let's look at some examples which contain these sounds. We'll look at ār and ūr first because ōr is a little bit more complicated.

ār                   How far is Margate?

                        So the sound ār appears twice in this sentence and is written 'ar'.
                        Notice that the word after 'far' begins with a vowel. Here we
                        pronounce the 'r' as a consonant sound before the 'is':
                        Hŏ fār riz mārgaet?

ūr                   Who's that person in the purple shirt?

Notice that “er”, “ir” and “ur” all make the same ūr sound.

There are words that make these sounds that are spelt differently but we can say that the standard spelling of the ār sound is 'ar', and the standard spellings of the ūr sound are 'er', 'ir' and 'ur'. 


Now let's look at ōr. Students make a lot of mistakes with this sound because they don't know the standard spellings. While 'or' is one way to spell this sound, there are several more: 'au', 'aw', 'ore', oar', 'or' and 'oor' all make the ōr sound. Seriously. And these are not exceptions!

ōr                   My daughter-in-law is never bored of playing board games,
                        inside or outdoors.

So let's hear what those sentences sound like:

- - - - -

Next: Vowel Sounds 5: The Lazy Vowel (the most common sound in English!)

Pronunciation 3: The Cowboys

We need a few more vowel sounds.
I've already introduced six 'short vowels' (a, e, i, o, u, u)
and five 'long vowels' (ae, ee, iy, oe, uu) - that's 11.
But we need more if we want to make the right sounds in English.

I think we need 6 more.

So let's go!

We are going to call the next two vowel sounds the “Cowboys”.
In English, both sounds are related to the letter 'o', so both of our symbols will also be related to the letter 'o'.

They are  ŏ and oy.



Cowboy #1: ŏ

ŏ is the vowel sound in cow. It even looks like a cow! (Kind of.)

There are two standard ways of spelling this sound: ´ou` and ´ow`. You can think of the ŏ as being an ´o` with a little ´u` or ´w` above it.

So the ŏ in ´cow` and ´vowel` is the same as the ŏ in ´loud` and ´sound`.

If you see a word you don`t know with ´ow` or ´ou` in it, think ŏ !

There are lots of words that don´t follow this rule - for example, ´know` (no) - we will call them ´non-standard` spelling. The system we're learning here tells us how to read and pronounce the regular or ´standard` spelling patterns. 

Note that in Romance languages (and in phonetics), the ŏ is related to the combination ´au`, which is responsible for lots of pronunciation mistakes in English.

Cowboy #2: oy

oy is the vowel sound in ´boy`  - boy

There are two standard ways of spelling this sound: ´oi` and ´oy`.

So the oy in ´boy` is the same sound as the oy in ´coin`.

- - - - -

Next: Vowel Sounds 4: The R-vowels

Pronunciation 2: Long Vowels

These are the sounds in words where the vowels interact with other letters. They sound like the names of the letters when you say the English alphabet:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

                                               

A = ae      E = ee      I = iy      O = oe      U = yuu

They are all long and soft.

The ae, ee and iy all end in a little y sound.

The oe and uu both end in a little w sound.

Notice that the letter in the alphabet, U is actually pronounced yuu, like the word, 'you'. The long sound in words is sometimes pronounced yuu and sometimes uu. For example, the word 'tune' is pronounced tyuun but the word 'flute' is pronounced fluut.

Anyway, here are some simple reference words that you can use to remember the sounds: "cake", "teeth", "kite", "boat", "tune" and "flute".

We could write the sound of these words as follows: caek, teeth, kiyt, boet, tyuun, fluut.

Please note: the symbols I'm using for the sounds are not the International Phonetic alphabet. Instead, I'm using a system called SPELL (a Semi-Phonetic system for English Language Learners.) The idea is to represent English sounds in a way that reinforces English spelling and avoids contradicting it.


Students often confuse the sounds ae, ee and iy, so a good trick is to learn the letters and their pronunciation together as a string: A-E-I-O-U = ae, ee, iy, oe, yuu

The best way to do this, as any good English teacher will tell you, is to listen to the 1983 hit by Freeez, "I. O. U. [I owe you]"

The lyrics are "A... E... A, E, I, O, U... U, I sometimes cry."

Listen to it until you can't get it out of your head or until you start crying.


The vowels make these sounds when they interact with other vowels. The sound doesn't come from one letter; it comes from the combination.

Here are some more examples:

A      E      I         O          U
ae     ee     iy      oe      uu   yuu
date  beat  wine  coat   juice
tail    seed  lie     smoke      cute

Notice that, in the words 'date', 'wine', 'smoke' and 'cute', it is the final magic e which interacts to produce the longer vowel sound.

Next: Vowel Sounds 3: The Cowboys

Pronunciation 1: Short Vowels

These are the sounds in simple words where vowels do not interact with each other. Choose a simple reference word that you know well to remember each sound. For example: "cat", "red", "big", "dog", "bus", "push" . They are short and hard.

                       

            i

            e

a                                 

                                    o         

                                                u

                                                            u

Say a, e, i , and you can feel your tongue moving up in your mouth. (Try it!)

Say a  with a wide mouth, tongue at the bottom.

i  is very short, made in the throat, with the tongue high in the mouth

e  is in between the two.

Say o  with a round mouth.

Short u  actually has two sounds in English, u (high) and  u (low):

• the u  in “cup” (like a relaxed a , deeper than “cap”)

• and the u  in “pull” (deeper than “cup” - push your lips out -

but not as deep or long as the uu  in “pool”)

Some more examples:

a          e            i            o            u            u

bat       bet         bit         bot         but

pat       pet         pit         pot                       put

Note that the letters written in blue italics represent the sound, and not necessarily the letter used. For example, let's compare the words, 'men' and 'women':

      men            men
      women       wimin


'Men' does as you would expect: the letter 'e' makes an e sound. I call words like this 'standard' spelling. The word is perfectly predictable.

But 'women' doesn't make a predictable sound. Both of the vowels are pronounced i , which is not the way English usually works. I call words like this 'non-standard' spelling.


Next: Vowel Sounds 2: Long Vowels

...Vowels Sounds: Introduction

English vowel sounds can be difficult. The problem is that we have five letters which represent lots of sounds. How many? Well, it depends on how you count them.

You may or may not be familiar with the "Phonemic Chart" and the "International Phonetic Alphabet", which some people like - hooray, there's a logical way of describing sound! - and some people hate - not another bloody alphabet!

I've been in both camps but since teaching in France and Spain, I've decided not to use this system. Why?

Let's take, as an example, the English word 'automatic'. In Spanish, it's 'automático' / 'automática'.

     In phonetic script, the English is:              ɔːtəmætɪk

                                 and the Spanish is:      aʊtɒmætɪkɒ / aʊtɒmætɪkæ

Now, apart from hurting your eyes, you'll notice that the phonetic aʊ looks like 'au'. So that's fine if you want to pronounce it in Spanish, but not so great when you want to pronounce it in English.

When Spanish students see 'automatic' they say aʊtɒmætɪk
It doesn't matter how often you tell them that, in English, 'au' should be ɔː ; their eyes are telling them aʊ.

Instead, we need a system that connects the English letters to the English sounds, and that's what I will be introducing gradually over the 'Vowel Sounds' series of posts. I'm using a system called SPELL (a Semi-Phonetic system for English Language Learners.) The idea is to represent English sounds in a way that reinforces English spelling and avoids contradicting it. It mainly concerns the vowels, but I'll go on to talk about consonants afterwards.

I should also point out that I'm from the south of England, so if it's American English you want, look away now!