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Learn About English Vowels Types - Improve Your American Accent
What are the vowel sounds In general, there is a difference between alphabet letters and the vowel sounds of the phonetics alphabet. There are 5 vowel sounds that correspond to the 5 letters of the alphabet and are pronounced absolutely the same: a,e, i,o,u, but there are also other sounds that you will not see in an English alphabet - those include ä, æ, i, µ, ü, and many others. Several other ways of categorizing the American sounds exist - what I mean is that in certain sources you can see other sounds included as well - for example, the sound that looks like upside-down A. Symbols of vowel sounds are not symbols that pertain to English language exclusively. For example, the sound ü exists in Turkish language as well and the schwa sound is also pretty widespread in certain other languages, so we are touching the topic of Linguistics. These sounds might exist in your language as well, for example. Now what are the Lax and Tense Vowels. You should have noticed that some vowel sounds are longer than the other ones. Particularly, the "alphabet" sounds and certain other sounds are twice as long as the other ones. That's why it was accepted to call the former group the "long" vowels and the later group the "short" vowels. If you are learning American English (and just for the sake of this Spoken English Tutorial's whim), it is more relevant for you to call them "tense" (corresponding to "long") and "lax" (pertaining to "short") vowels and the reason is because for most people learning English as Second Language have a bad habit of producing the American sounds way too shortly and abruptly, and we all know that natives of North America have a tendency to use prolonged sounds. Well, to understand what I'm trying to say better, you have to imagine Chinese or Vietnamese speaking English. Due to the cultural and linguistic background people from these countries have a habit of shortening a lot of sounds (or it is more relevant to say not producing them for the right duration) that in turn make their speech sound very abrupt and foreign. Of course there are also other ways to categorize the sounds (for example, some linguists use "checked" and "free" vowels as their preferred choice), but we won't touch these in this article. The difference between Lax and Tense Vowels In American English there are 8 tense and 6 lax vowels. As you already know the tense vowels are longer than lax vowels. Another characteristics that distinguishes a tense vowel from lax one is that, as the name suggests, it requires a lot of movements in your mouth. Try to say 'a', 'e' in a way that doesn't move your lips, teeth or tongue significantly and you just won't be able to. On the other hand, the lax vowels, the ones who are shortened in sound and more abrupt, do not require excessive mouth movements. It is pretty easy to produce the schwa sound (the one you can hear in 'the', for example) with minimal use of either your lips, teeth or tongue. The understanding and proper usage of the above is crucial. What I'm trying to get to is that since there are only 8 tense and 6 lax vowels in American English it is very advised for you to remember them all. It is not uncommon for a non-native to inadvertently produce a sound that just does not exist in American English phonetics. Of course, they don't realize it because they never practiced so they don't have the sounds ingrained into their muscle memories yet. For example, when you don't know how to pronounce "crucial" or you think you are not sure if you are saying it correctly you just have to remember in what ways the "u" letter can be pronounced and then just pick the right sound. If you had previously trained the vowel sounds - you will easily be able to feel the right way to say the word. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com The Author is running an English Speaking Tips website on the topic of Spoken English Tutorial and also gives generals tips on How to Improve English Speaking. Visit for more. |
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