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.

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`.

- - - - -

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