Hi there, in this video we are going to be looking at the vowel sounds.
I am Colin Munro and this is the English Language Club.
As I mentioned in a previous video, when we think about the alphabet we normally think
of there being 5 vowels A, E, I, O, U. However, when it comes to pronunciation, there
are many vowel sounds and these sounds can be spelt in different ways which can be a
little inconsistent. This makes things difficult when learning
English especially as in many other languages the vowels are pronounced more consistently
with how they they are spelt. There are 12 sounds that we will be looking
at in this video and they are the single vowels or sometimes called; monophthongs.
The place of each symbol on the chart tells us something about how it is produced.
Remember! Pronunciation is physical and as we go through these sounds you need to think
about these three questions; Is your mouth open, closed or in the middle?
What is the position of your tongue? What shape are your lips?
For the sounds on the top row the mouth is almost closed
/i:/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /u:/
For the sounds on the bottom row the mouth is almost wide open.
/æ/, /ʌ/, /ɑ:/ and /ɒ/
For the sounds on the left, our tongue is near the front teeth.
/i:/, /e/ and /æ/, When we get to the right, it has moved back
/u:/, /ɔ:/ and /ɒ/
Lets look at some examples words for each sound.
/i:/, as in "me", "these", "need" and "be".
/ɪ/ as in "with", "this", "if" and "think".
/ʊ/ as in "put", "would", "look", and "woman".
/u:/ as in "to", "you", "new" and "who".
Do you see how the position on the chart relates to where the sound comes from?
On the second row the mouth is open a little more.
/e/ as in "get", "when", "well" and "very".
/ə/ as in "the", "about", "could" and "us".
/ɜ:/ as in "her", "work", "learn", and "word".
/ɔ:/ as in "or", "also", "more", and "call".
Now lets look at the bottom row where our mouth should be almost wide open.
/æ/ as in "have", "that", "as", and "can".
/ʌ/ as in "but", "up", "one", and "much".
/ɑ:/ as in "start", "ask", "large" and "after".
/ɒ/ as in "of", "on", "from" and "not".
So that is all the single vowels. Obviously there are a lot more examples but the examples
in this video are some of the most common words.
The important thing to remember is that pronunciation is physical.
Well thanks for watching. I hope you found it useful.
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