The Description of Vowels

CHAPTER 3 THE VOWEL INVENTORIES OF SPECIFIC ENGLISH

DIALECTS The vowels in English have many varieties. Vowels are symbolized in different ways by many authors. The most important way is the quality – determined mostly by the position of the tongue in the mouth, higher or lower, more forward or more back. It is often known that vowels are defined as voiced sounds when they are spoken. There are many varieties of vowels, namely voiceless vowels, diphthongs, etc. Practical experiences in learning vowels teach every body that in learning vowels, it is necessary to direct attention more particularly to the acoustic qualities sounds. This means that it needs more than just ‘simple imitation’ in learning it. It is needed to know about the organs involved in the production of vowels.

3.1. The Description of Vowels

The method for explaining vowels has been introduced by many phoneticians. A certain description of the tongue position only can not contribute much to the learners. If the description is to show the exact relations of a vowel to another vowel, it will become intelligible soon. Thus, if a certain foreign vowel is known to be formed with a tongue position half-way two sounds familiar to everyone, they will be able to adjust their tongue with a lot of practice. If their Universitas Sumatera Utara ears are keen enough, they may be able to acquire the foreign vowels in this way without a trouble. So, how to describe the English vowels? What reference can describe it? One answer is that the English vowels may be described with the reference to the vowels of our mother tongue. Even an author of a book cannot base his description of foreign vowels on the vowels occurring in the readers’ pronunciation of their mother tongue because not all of the readers have the same pronunciation and they are of different nationality. For example, if any description of English vowels is compared with the French vowel, for example, in word bonne, without further explanation, it will be interpreted in different ways by different French readers. For me, there is only one way of making written description of vowels which is intelligible to a large range of readers of different nationalities. That is by describing the sounds with reference ‘Cardinal vowels’ by a great phonetician, Daniel Jones. Cardinal vowels are a set of fixed vowel-sounds having known acoustic qualities and known tongue and lip positions. It has been found that a scale of eight cardinal vowels forms a convenient basis for describing the vowels of any language. Cardinal vowels are represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet by letters i, e, ɛ, a, ɑ , ɔ, o, u. Vowels are different from one another. What make the difference, in respect of quality, is the modification of the tone resulting from modification in shapes and sizes of resonating chambers through which the tone passes. The main organs that make the modification are the soft palate, the lips, and the tongue. J. Universitas Sumatera Utara Sethi and P.V. Dhamija from Prentice Hall of India have a description for the identification of vowels: 1 the position of the soft palate – whether it is raised to produce oral vowels, or lowered to produced nasalized vowels; 2 the shape assumed by the lips – spread, neutral, or rounded; and 3 the shape assumed by the tongue – which part of it is raised and how high. From the description, only the shape assumed by the lips can be observed by the eye. The position of the soft palate can be only determined by the ears. While the shapes assumed by the tongue, only certain extreme positions can be felt. For instance, in the production of the vowel in the word key, it can be felt that the front of the tongue is being raised very high towards the hard palate. From the three factors, the first one, the position of the soft palate, can not be stated every time. It can be felt that when the soft palate raises, the nasal cavity is shut off. So the vowel produced is orals, not nasals. The second, the lips can assume a number of shapes. It can spread, for example, in the English word bead. It can be neutral, for example, bird. And it can be opened, for example, mark. The third, the shape is assumed by the tongue. The tongue, which is very flexible, can assume virtually an unlimited number of shapes or position. Every shapeposition will produce different sounds in different quality. Thus, the differences in quality between the vowels in English words beat, bit, bet, and bat, for instance, are caused by the assumption of different shapes of the tongue. The Universitas Sumatera Utara shape is determined by two factors: the position of the tongue, and the height of the tongue. a The position of the tongue The parts of the tongue which are mainly raised in producing the vowels are the front, the back, and the part where the front and the back are supposed to meet, the center. The vowels produced when each of these parts is raised are called the front vowels Examples in words: seat, set, sit, and sat , the back vowels Examples in words: laugh, caught, pool, and dot, and the central vowels Examples of central vowels are in words curl, girl, and in the second syllable in doctor, for instance. b The height of the tongue Any part of the tongue can only be raised at a certain point. The part of the tongue is raised to produce vowels. Similarly, any part of the tongue can be lowered too. The vowels produced when any part of the tongue is raised are called close vowels, and the vowels produced by any lowered part of the tongue are called open vowels. The words sit and suit are examples of close vowels. To produce them, the tongue is raised up to nearly highest point. While to produce the vowel in the word cart, the back tongue is at the lowest point which is possible for production of the vowel, therefore, the vowel in cart is an open vowel. In many languages, there are vowel segments where the quality is not constant: it changes again and again while the vowels are being uttered. English has a number of such vowels. The term for the vowel is a diphthong; while vowels Universitas Sumatera Utara that do not change are called monophthong. Day and Eye are two examples of diphthong. A diphthong may be described and identified in terms of its beginning and ending points. Thus, the diphthong in the word noise starts a half-open back rounded position. Diphthongs Diphthongs are sounds made by gliding from one vowel position to another. Diphthongs are represented phonetically by sequence of two letters. It can be simply said that diphthongs occur when there are two vowels exist together. The first vowel shows the starting point and the second one indicates the direction of movement. For example, diphthong ei in the word day, e is the starting vowel, and it glides to i. According to RP Received Pronunciation, there are eight diphthongs. They are divided into closing diphthongs, centering diphthongs, and rising diphthongs. Diphthong is not the same thing as a sequence of two monophthongs. For example, in the soil, there is a diphthong, while in the word sawing, there is a sequence of monophthongs.

3.2. The general inventory of English vowels