The Vowels Of American English Page 7

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include them with the simple vowels, while others group them together with the
diphthongs.)
It may be difficult to hear the difference between the simple vowels and glided vowels
when someone is speaking at a normal speed, but when you say the vowels slowly, you
should be able to hear and feel the change in tongue position. In particular, it’s the slight
glide at the end of /ey/ and /ow/ that makes them sound different from /e/ or /o/-type
vowels in many other languages.
Finally, some vowels have a big change in tongue position and sometimes also in lip
rounding from the beginning to the end of the sound. For example, /ay/ as in
sounds
buy
like a combination of the vowels /ɑ/ and /iy/ blended together, with the first part longer
and more prominent, and the second part lasting a shorter time than the first. We call these
vowels diphthongs. The vowel quadrant shown below illustrates the diphthongs by
drawing arrows from the beginning to the ending tongue positions for each one.
In addition to the change in tongue position, the diphthongs /aw/ and /oy/ also have a
change in lip rounding; /aw/ begins with unrounded lips and changes to rounded lips, and
/oy/ moves from rounded to unrounded.
The glided vowels and diphthongs in American English all end in the glides /y/ or /w/.
We’ve already seen glides as a category of consonants, which are also called semivowels.
We can see now why they have this name, which means “half-vowel.”
They sound like
quick vowels, but function as either vowels or consonants, depending on the context.
The vowel /ɚ /
There is one more vowel-like sound in English: /ɚ/. This is the sound in words like bird,
first, and her. In many textbooks this sound is analyzed as a combination of a vowel plus a
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