English Monophthongs

The monophthong is a vowel in the production of which the organs of speech do not change their position throughout the whole duration of a vowel.

1. All English front vowels have the following features in common.

1. The bulk of the tongue is pushed forward.

2. Its front is raised in the direction of the hard palate.

3. The tongue-tip is placed at the lower teeth.

2. All the back vowels are characterized by the following common features.

1. The bulk of the tongue is pushed backward.

2. Its back is raised in the direction of the soft palate to different heights (high, mid, low).

3. The tongue-tip is drawn from the teeth /, /.

4. The lips are rounded, except for // and //.

3. The central vowels have the following features in common.

1. The front and the blade of the tongue are equally raised. They are neither pushed forward nor retracted, occupying an intermediate position.

2. The tongue-tip is at the lower teeth.

3. The lips are spread for // or neutral for //.

English Diphthongs

The diphthong is a monophonemic combination of two vowel elements with gliding articulation.

The stressed element of a diphthong (which is always the first one in English) is called the nucleus, the second one is called the glide.

There are eight diphthongs in English. According to the type of nucleus they fall into three groups:

• front diphthongs /, , , , /;

• central diphthong //;

• back diphthongs /, /.

According to the type of glide they are grouped into:

• // gliding diphthongs: /, , /;

• // gliding diphthongs: /, , /;

• // gliding diphthongs: /, /.

Note. The sequences // and // are biphonemic combination of a diphthong and the neutral //. The glide in them is very indistinct, e. g. In an hour. The Tower of London. But the possessive pronoun ‘our’ is monophonemic, e. g. In our  country.

The English Consonant System

The consonant is a speech sound in the production of which the air stream coming out of the lungs has to overcome a certain obstruction on its way.

The English consonant system consists of 24 consonant phonemes which can be classified as follows:

1. According to the type of obstruction (occlusives, constrictives, occlusive-constrictives, or affricates).

2. According to the articulatory organ (labial, lingual, pharyngal).

3. According to the prevalence of noise over the musical tone (noise consonants and sonorants).

4. According to the work of the vocal cords (voiced and voiceless).

5. According to the position of the soft palate (oral and nasal).

Chart of English Consonant Phonemes

			Labial		Lingual						Pharyngal
			Bilabial	Labio-dental	Forelingual				Media-lingual	Back-lingual
					dental	apico-alveolar	palato-alveolar	post-alveolar
Occlusives	Plosives (noise consonants)		 			t d				 
	Nasal sonorants									
Constrictives	Fricatives (noise consonants)			 	 	 	 				
	Sonorants	Medial							
		Lateral				l
Occlusive-constictives (affricates)							 