Phonetics--10/18/2012

We went over English vowels today and learned how to read the IPA vowel chart. The vowel chart is much harder to read and understand than the consonant chart because vowels can be articulated very differently depending on the person. The vowel chart is more abstract than concrete and different vowels are used depending on the dialect of English. There's a separate chart for Standard British English pronunciation and one for American English and there's an even more specific chart that includes diphthongs, which are sounds that start off as one sound and end as another. This is seen in the word "boy". The "oy" part starts as a front rounded vowel and ends as a back unrounded vowel. Another characteristic of vowels is "tenseness" but this is difficult to quantify and most vowels that are labeled as "tense" are only labeled that way because that's how they've always been labeled, despite very little evidence. However, there are certain rules that tense vowels seem to follow. For example, they can appear at the end of open syllables, such as in the word "bee". There is no word "bi", where it's pronounced the same way as the "bi" portion of "bit".