The Sounds of English: Vowels (dipthongs) - Neal Snape Flipbook PDF

The Sounds of English: Vowels (dipthongs) Week 3. Neal Snape 2 ... •Diphthongs are the element in a language which are m

---

119 Views
88 Downloads
FLIP PDF 158.59KB

DOWNLOAD FLIP

REPORT DMCA

Week 3.

This is also visible on a spectrogram: this is the pure vowel /a/…

The Sounds of English: Vowels (dipthongs)

2

Neal Snape

…and this is the diphthong /aI/. Notice how the formants (the dark bands) seperate towards the end.

English diphthongs may cause Japanese speakers difficulty for two main reasons: • Japanese has five basic vowel sounds while English has eight dipthongs. • The English spelling system is strange in its representation of diphthongs

3

4

Technically, English diphthongs are divided into two groups: First we will look at the closing group… • Closing diphthongs – which tend to move from an open to a close position • Centring diphthongs – which tend towards a central position /ǝ/ (schwa)

5

6

1

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

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

7

Then there is ‘boy’, ‘choice’:

8

Then ‘down’, ‘loud’:

9

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

11

10

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

12

2

Finally, there is a diphthong which is quite rare and is often realised as /O:/ - ‘tour’, ‘poor’:

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

13

Similar to pure vowels, the acoustic qualities (formants 1 and 2) of diphthongs may be plotted on a graph similar to the quadrilateral…

14

… this is an elaborated plot of inverted values of F1 against F2 of the diphthong /aI/.

15

One or two final considerations:

16

Finally:

• Although the symbols indicating pure vowels and the starting and closing points of diphthongs are often the same they do not necessarily correspond to the same points • Lip rounding is another variable, generally associated with back vowels

17

• 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.

18

3