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

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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:

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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`.

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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!