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 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!