2011-12 LINGUA INGLESE 1 modulo A/BIntroduction to English Linguisticsprof. Hugo Bowles

Lesson 9 Diphthongs

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fear go house I pain pear tour toy

here know how my play there pour voice

beer home down either cave where choice

hear bone loud eye reign air

clear sew sigh made heir

dear crow thai maid wear

Don’t tie obey

foam pay

foe

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TRIPHTHONGS

/ei/ + schwa

/ai /+ schwa

/au/ + schwa

/oi/ + schwa

schwa + /u/ + schwa

player fire hour royal lower

liar power

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Minimal pairs

Beware of heard

a dreadful word that

looks like beard and

sounds like bird

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While the position of the tongue is more or less stable for a pure vowel…

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… a diphthong is characterised by a graceful movement from one point to another, for this reason they are also sometimes known as glides.

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English diphthongs may cause Italian speakers difficulty for two main reasons:

Italian has four diphthongs while English has eight. All the Italian diphthongs have equivalents in English which are not the same but which are reasonably similar

Nowhere is the English spelling system more bizarre than in its representation of diphthongs

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If one has a clear idea of where pure vowels are articulated on the quadrilateral then interpreting the diphthong symbols is not difficult.

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Technically, English diphthongs are divided into two groups:

Closing diphthongs – which tend to move from an open to a close position, these roughly correspond to Italian sounds

Centring diphthongs – which tend towards a central position

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First we will look at the closing group…

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… the ‘pay’, ‘ made’, ‘maid’, ‘reign’, ‘obey’, sound:

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Then we have the ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘tie’, ‘sigh’, ‘either’, ‘eye’, ‘Thai’, sound:

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Then there is ‘boy’, ‘choice’:

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Then ‘down’, ‘loud’:

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To end the closing group, the most common diphthong in English, that of ‘no’, ‘know’,‘bone’, ‘foam’, ‘sew’, ‘though’, ‘don’t’, ‘foe’, ‘crow’:

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To start with the centring group, we have the most common, that of ‘clear’, ‘deer’, ‘here’, ‘wier’:

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Then ‘air’, ‘where’, wear’, ‘care’, ‘heir’:

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Finally, there is a diphthong which is quite rare - ‘tour’, ‘poor’:

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Pronunciation change

Poor used to be pronounced like puer in Latin (and still is in some regions, e.g. Scotland).

Now it tends to be pronounced as a long vowel (like “door” and “more”)

Is there a difference between the pronunciation of “poor” and “paw” (zampa) ?

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Finally:

Diphthongs are the element in a language which are most liable to change. The majority of the characteristics of a given accent are usually to be found in this area, so understanding of the underlying mechanics is vital if one wants to understand accents and accent change.