Pronunciation 6: The Sliders

Ok, so the big question is: if I just said that the Lazy Vowel was the last of the vowel sounds, what are we doing here?

Well, you'll be pleased to know that the Sliders are not new vowel sounds. If you've been through Vowel Sounds 1-5, you already know the sounds we're going to talk about. But I want us to think about how some of those sounds combine together.

Hopefully, you remember the long vowel sounds in part 2.

Let's take three of them:

ee       iy       uu

That's the ee in 'feet' or 'team', the iy in 'kite' or 'time', and the uu in 'spoon' or 'cute'.

And I really hope you also remember the Lazy Vowel from part 5:

         ~

That's the ~ at the beginning of 'about' or at the end of 'doctor'.

Now for the sliders! (How exciting.) They all slide from one vowel sound into the Lazy Vowel,  ~ .


The E-slider: ee~

Try sliding from ee to ~. Don't stop in the middle. Nice and smooth... like a nice, cool beer.

beer          bee~
clear         clee~
sincere      sinsee~


The I-slider: iy~

Now, try sliding from iy to ~. Don't stop in the middle. Nice and smooth.

fire        fiy~
tyre       tiy~


The U-slider: uu~

Now, try sliding from uu to ~. Don't stop in the middle. Nice and smooth.

cure        cyuu~
Europe    yuu~r~p


So, the sliders associated with the letters E, I and U are simply a combination of the long vowels, ee, iy and uu, and the lazy vowel, ~.




It's interesting that the long sounds, ae and oe, do not have sliders. The slider that we associate with the letter O comes from the first cowboy vowel instead, ŏ.
And strangely, the slider that we associate with the letter A comes from the short vowel, e.


The cowboy O-slider: ŏ~

Try sliding from ŏ to ~. Don't stop in the middle. Nice and smooth.

flour        flŏ~
ours        ŏ~z
hours      ŏ~z       Yes, the h in this word is silent.

Now we have sliders associated with letters E, I, O and U. But what about the letter A?
Why did I leave that till last? Because the A-slider is a bit strange.

The strange A-slider: e~

What's going on here? The A-slider is a combination of the short e sound and the lazy vowel, ~.

The e sound?

Yes.

Not the a sound.

No.

Try sliding from e to ~. Don't stop in the middle. Nice and smooth.

Wait a minute...

No, come on, do it!

chair        che~

rare          re~

airfare      e~fe~

As you can see, the e~ is associated with the letter A. The letter E already has a slider, from the long ee sound. That's why the sound e~ has jumped over to join the letter A. (Quite a nice thing to do, really.)

So that's it!

The next post will give an overview of the vowel sounds and how they relate to written words.