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 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