...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!