Introduction to English Vowel Sounds

English RP (BBC) accent has 44 sounds including consonants and vowels. Out of 44 sounds, 20 sounds are vowel sounds and 24 sounds are consonants. Out of 20 vowel sounds, 12 sounds are pure vowels or monophthong and 8 sounds are diphthongs.

Monophthong sounds

There are 12 pure vowel sounds that are known as monophthongs. Monophthong are further categorized into short vowel and long vowel.

Short vowels: There are 7 short vowel in English that are ɪ, e, æ, ʌ, ɒ, ʊ, and ǝ. Examples for short vowel sounds in words are given below:

• /ɪ/ pit
• /e/ pet
• /æ/ pat
• /ʌ/ putt
• /ɒ/ pot
• /ʊ/ put
• /ǝ/ another

Long vowels:  There are 5 long vowel in English that are I, ɑ, ɔ, u, and ɜ. Examples for long vowel sounds in words are given below:

• /i/ bean
• /ɑ/ barn
• /ɔ/ born
• /u/ boon
• /ɜ/ burn

English Diphthongs

There are total 8 English diphthongs that we further divide into two different categories: centering and closing. Centering diphthongs end with ‘ǝ’ sound and closing diphthongs end with either ‘ɪ’ or ‘ʊ’ sounds. Examples for these diphthongs in English words are given below:

Examples of diphthongs in English words

• /ɪǝ/ peer
• /eǝ/ pair
• /ʊǝ/ poor
• /eɪ/ bay
• /aɪ/ buy
• /ɔɪ// boy
• /ǝʊ/ no
• /aʊ/ now