The Truth About Pronouncing American English Vowels

How would you define the word vowel? Most people would say that a vowel is a letter such as a, e, i, o, u or sometimes y. That’s true. But in spoken language a vowel is a speech sound that you make in your mouth. Vowels are very important because they are the core of each syllable.

Every language has vowels. Some languages have as few as three vowel sounds and some languages have more than 20 vowel sounds. Do you how many vowel sounds there are in your native language?

As we just said, the English alphabet has five or six vowels; a, e, i, o, u, and y. 

However, did you know that in American English these vowels make up to fifteen spoken sounds? The variety of American English vowel sounds often makes it difficult for non-native speakers to pronounce them correctly.

Making vowel sounds

It can be hard to describe exactly how and where each vowel is produced in the mouth. Pronunciation teachers describe the articulation or production of vowels using the following four characteristics:

1. Tongue height - Is the tongue high or low in the mouth?
2. Frontness/backness of tongue - What part of the tongue is involved in articulation?
3. Tenseness/laxness - Are the jaw muscles are tense or relaxed?
4. Lip Shape - What shape are the lips, rounded or spread?

English pronunciation textbooks use vowel charts to show students the places where vowels are articulated in the mouth. You can click here to see an interactive vowel chart from the University of Texas.

We will practice pronouncing some American English vowel sounds in today’s mini-lesson.

Mini Lesson: American English Vowels Pronunciation Exercises

When you produce a vowel sound your vocal chords vibrate as the airflow from your lungs moves through your mouth. As the airflow moves, the way you change the shape of your mouth, lips and the height of your tongue affect the sound of the vowel.

The purpose of these exercises is for you to feel how different vowel sounds feel inside your mouth.

Exercise Set 1

For the first two sets of words I want you to focus on tongue height.

Say the set of words after me. Feel how your tongue moves from high to low as you say the vowels in each word. Put your finger on your chin and listen and say each word again. You should feel your tongue lower and your jaw drop as you say each word.

• High-beat
• Mid-bait
• Low-bat
• High-boot
• Mid-boat
• Low-pot

Click the play button to listen and repeat each pair of words after me:

Exercise Set 2 & 3

For the next two sets of words I want you to focus on what part of the tongue you use when you say the vowels in these words, the front or the back.

Say this set of words after me. When you say the vowels in these words you should feel a slight bend in the front part of your tongue as the air flows through your mouth:

Listen and say the next set of words. When you say the vowels in these words you should feel a slight bend in the back part of your tongue as the air flows through your mouth:

Click play below to listen to both sets of words:

Note: You can use this week’s Featured Learning Resource for additional practice on pronouncing American English vowel sounds.

Insight: Homonyms - Detect Word Meaning Through Listening

Homonyms are groups of two or three words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings. There are many homonyms in English and you can only understand the meaning of the word by listening to the context of the sentence.

Our homonyms for this week are:

a. bite- (verb) to grab with the teeth or jaws
b. bite- (noun) a snack or a small meal
c. byte- ( noun) a unit of computer information or data-storage capacity

Listening Activity 

Listen as I say each sentence and choose the correct word from the pair of homonyms above. Remember that homonyms sound the same so you can only understand the meaning of the word from the context of the sentence.

Sentences:

1. I need to stop for a bite to eat
2. That dog tried to bite me!
3. There are eight bits in a byte

Answers: c, a, b

Click Play to listen now:

Featured Learning Resource: University of Iowa Phonetics

This is an invaluable resource for learning vowel and consonant articulation from the University of Iowa. It’s one of my favorite teaching tools!   Go to the website and choose American English. Then choose monothongs and front to learn about the front vowel sounds. As you click on each vowel sound you can do three things; 1) play the animated sagittal diagram, 2) watch the lip movement and 3) listen to sample words with the featured vowel sound. Be sure to view the vowel sounds for the front, central and back parts of the mouth. Click on the image to go to the site now.