English vowel system

English vowel system

PHONETICSPHONETICS

English vowels

Vowels are determined by changes in position of the lips, tongue and palate.

These changes can be very slight and difficult to detect.

Spanish/English system

How many vowels do we have in Spanish?

How many vowels does the English system have?

Long vowelShort vowel

/a:/ /æ/

/ɔː/ /ɔ/

/u:/ /u/

/i:/ /i/

/e/

/ʌ/

/ə:/ /ə/

Spanish vowels English vowels

/a:/

Give double quantity, because it’s a long vowel.

Most important spellings: ask, grass, car, clerk, heart, half, aunt, laugh

/æ/

It is a short vowel. A didactic resource to get an approach would be to pronounce the phoneme /e/

Most important spellings: flash, match, land, lamp.

/ɔː/

It is a long sound. To many Spanish speakers it sounds more proximate to /u/ than to /o/

Most important spellings: horse, poor, more, saw, board, all, bought

A didactic resource to get an approach would be to pronounce the phoneme /o/

Most important spellings: not, box, want, what, watch, because, cough, knowledge

/ɔ/

/u:/It is a close sound where the lips are moderately rounded.It is more closed and longer than the Spanish ‘u’

Most important spellings: spoon, shoot, soup, route, do, June, blue, shoe

/u/It is a close sound where the lips are moderately rounded but this sound is shorter.

Most important spellings: full, put, book, look, could, women.

/i:/It is a long vowel. To produce this vowel give approximately double douration to the approximate Castillian phoneme

Most important spellings: see, feed, read, eat, shield, field, scene, people, key, quay.

/i/It is a closed vowel. Spanish have difficulties to distinguish this sound with the long one. Both are varieties but don’t make any difference in meanings

Most important spellings: milk, fill, pin, rich, lady, body.

/ə:/There is no similar sound in Spanish. I its a central vowel. A didactic procedure would be to produce a Spanish ‘e’ and, little by little, to approximate it to an ‘o’, not reaching it.

Most important spellings: first, serve, earth, nurse, turn, word, journey

/ə/

It is the most common vowel to appear in English. There is no similar sound in Spanish. Any vowel or group of vowels may, in unstressed position, represent the schwa.

Famous, letter, woman, should...

Short sounds which have not long sounds

/e/

The Castillian ‘e’ is usually more closed than the English equivalent.

Most important spellings: bed, sell, pen, head,

many, any

Sounds of EnglishLet’s practice more

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