Search results for 'tag:Pronunciation tag:Consonants' matching tags 'Pronunciation' and 'Consonants'

Re: W is a vowel

Forbes — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:05:34 GMT

I am glad we agree about the sound /w/.

That leaves us with the letter <w>.

Letters of the alphabet must not be confused with sounds. By convention and for convenience, letters that represent vowel sounds are called vowels and letters that represent consonant sounds are called consonants. (In the rest of this post when I use the word "vowel" I mean a vowel symbol or letter and use "vowel sound" to refer to sounds.) This does not present any special problem for many languages, but for some, including English, difficulties arise when you begin to look into it. The complexities of English orthography arise, at least in part, because the way it is written is etymological rather than phonetic; that is, writing represents an earlier stage of the language.

Consider the words mat and mate. If asked, most people would have no hesitation in saying that <m> and <t> were consonants and <a> and <e> were vowels. A moment's thought, however, may lead us to ask what the <e> is doing in mate. It clearly has a function in that it changes the vowel sound between the <m> and <t> - mat and mate are pronounced differently. Even so, the <e> has no value on its own - you have to take the whole package of <a> + <C> + <e> = the vowel sound in mate, a fairly regular correspondence.

Consonants also influence the value given to vowels.

Take mating v matting. Here it is the doubling that changes the quality of the vowel sound. Are we justified in saying that there is some indication of "vowelness" in the consonants here?

The vowel sound of bath can be represented in several ways:

bath

harm

palm

etc

The <r> and <l> are not pronounced, but without them we have ham and Pam. Can <r> and <l> be said to be functioning as consonants?

Now consider the letter <k>. It is a consonant most will say. By what is it doing in knot? The <k> does help to show the pronunciation since not is pronounced in the same way. It is true that the presence of the <k> helps to distinguish the two words, but that is coincidental; it is simply the case that the <k> has not been eliminated since the /k/ stopped being pronounced. Are we justified in saying that in knot <k> is a consonant?

I have already noted above that <y> can function to represent (a) the sound /j/ (b) a vowel or dipthong and (c) an element of a dipthong.

<w> does not operate in quite the same way as <y> as (ignoring the rare borrowing from Welsh) it never operates on its own to represent a vowel or dipthong. It can :

(a) represent the sound /w/ in way

(b) combine with another vowel to represent a vowel sound as is law

(c) combine with another vowel to represent a dipthong as is cow

I therefore do not see the problem in saying that <w> has a dual function in writing - it is both a vowel and a consonant.

Re: How to distinguish the pronunciation of the vowels

Mister Micawber — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:11:49 GMT

.
You have a problem, but I can suggest little more than practice and concentration; I presume you have a tutor or teacher or acquaintance who can listen to and advise you. I hadn't noticed that Chinese students have much trouble with vowel sounds before-- I thought the consonants were more difficult.

While there are plenty of regional variations in English pronunciation, the pronunciation of e.g. the /e/ in egg is usually similar enough to elude the sensitivities of a learner. Practice saying and listening to (pronunciations are available at MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE, for example) lots and lots of simple words with those vowel sounds:

apple, cram, fat, hat, rat, sat and bat, etc.

egg, eft, end, bend, send, fend, rend, et cetera.

by, sigh, guy, rye, die, fry, sky, etc.

Re: "an year" VS "a year"

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:24:19 GMT

its a year...

The confusion of A year v/s Av year arises because some people tend to pronounce year as ear... which is not the correct pronunciation.

Y sound in "Year" is same as Y sound in "Yes"... and this Y sound is consonant so its "a year"...

Re: a(n) university ??

Yankee — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:50:07 GMT

The use of 'a' or 'an' is based on pronunciation.

If a word begins with a vowel sound, you should use 'an'. For example:

- an apple
- an elephant
- an idea
- an orange
- an umbrella
- an hour
- an SOS

If a word begins with a consonant sound, you should use 'a'. This includes some words that have a vowel at the beginning. For example:

- a ewe
- a university
- a uniform
- a unique person

Re: Puzzle about the pronunciation of the word 'THE'

yizhivika — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:04:16 GMT

Hi Mathew,

Yes, as Mister Micawber says, native English-speakers instinctively know which pronunciation of 'the' to use before a noun (or an adjective + noun), but I can see that it may be a problem for some people learning the language.

As you have yourself noted, we generally use the 'thee' version before a vowel (as in 'the apple'), and the "theh' version before a consonant (as in 'the pen'), and the reason native English-speakers know which version to use, is because they read (or think of) the two words together, not separately!

From your name, I would guess that your mother-tongue is probably Mandarin Chinese (Ni shi zhong guo ren ma?), and if so, then you'll know that there's sometimes a similar situation in Chinese with tones (e.g. 'bu' meaning 'not' is normally pronounced as a fourth tone, but changes to a second tone when followed by another word that is pronounced with a fourth tone), and the only way you know which tone to use is by thinking of the two words together, not as individual characters.

By the way, there is an exception to the general rule of pronouncing 'the' as 'theh' before a consonant, but it's a special case, as the 'the' is being used less as a definite article, and more like an adjective. For example:

"Beijing is the (pronounced as 'thee') place to be this August!" (because of the Olympic Games!).

Re: Consonant cluster reduction

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:54:33 GMT

Hi. On TV you may not hear the sounds, the tongue-play within the chamber of the mouth and the tiny air stops, etcetera that occur when people speak. You need to be face-to-face with your pronunciation coach.

I can well see how you "hear" FAX for facts, because the sounds are about identical in those two words. You know from the context when someone tells you to send them a FAX that they are not talking about the "facts." That is the context or the syntax of the language.

GIFTS is spelled that way, but, actually when you pronounce it, you DO HEAR "GIFS." The ortography of words is a clue to their meaning, so the spelling is important when you are reading.

ASKED. Pronounce ASK. Feel and hear the little "kick" when you produce the "k." Now, add the past tense syllable, "ed." In this particular word, "ed" is pronounced as if it were a "t." Your mouth cannot go from the "K" to the "T" without trouble, so the "K" gets forgiven, softened, blurred in pronunciation..it just about disappears totally so that your tongue is able to touch the alveolar ridge just behind your front teeth. That is the positioning of the tongue within the mouth that causes this particular phenomenon. KICKed...see above for "asked." These kinds of sound changes are required due to the placement of the tongue.

On that subject, I might point your interest to the pronunciation of "a" or "an." Before a consonant you use "a" and before a vowel you use "an."
Try it. A dog. A cat. A shoe. A house. Now consonants.....An elephant, An egg, An old man, An idiot. If you were to reverse this speaking pattern, you'd quickly feel the ugliness and difficulty forced into your tongue movements.

An dog; an cat, an shoe; an house..a elephant; a egg; a old man; a idiot.
Carole in Umatilla, OR

Re: the pronunciation of the word "the"

sumryan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:57:25 GMT

The word 'the' has the voiced /th/ sound. Before consonants the vowel has a schwa sound so 'the' sounds like thÉ, Before vowel sounds the vowel has an /iy/ sound like thÄ.

Some questions to ask

Belly — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:02:03 GMT

I want to ask 2 questions about pronunciation first:

1) Do Americans say /use-d/ or /use-t/ in used to?

2) I saw Ann Cook wrote this in American Accent course:

If the first consonant is voiced, the next one will be as well. If the first one is unvoiced, the second one will sound unvoiced, no matter what you do.

Then she gave out examples:

After a voiced sound: He had to do it /he hae (d) d' du(w)'t/

After an unvoiced sound: he got to do it / he ga(t)d' du(w)'t/

a)(note that the words in bracket (d) (t) (w) are small and stand upper to others, I wonder whether we pronounced them)

b) How do those examples support the cause she gave, but I've seen no reason why. After t( unvoiced), we still pronounce: 'd, and so does after (d), so what's the difference?

3)What is the difference between rate and incidence?

4) "Lifting bar bell helps your pectorals expand" or ""Lifting bar bells helps your pectorals expand"

Re: fair-haired

Pter — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:02:06 GMT

Yes, there are regional variations in American English. Do you know which accent is chosen by MW as the reference in the pronunciation keys. Is it General American?

My problem is that, as I have mentioned before, they are indeed denoted differently in British English. The first one is a simple vowel while the second one is a diphthong / e /. The question is whether the diphthong / e / ONLY occurs before an R. If it occurs before some other consonants, such as D, L, T, N ( / -et /, / -el /, / -ed /, / -en / ), using / er / to indicate a different sound from / e / is not a good idea because you'll have problems showing the differences between / -et /, / -el /, / -ed /, / -en / and / -et /, / -el /, / -ed /, / -en / respectively.

Certain combination of sounds just do not exist in English and that's why they don't need to use diacritic to indicate that the P in SP is non-aspirated whereas an initial P is aspirated. The bottom line is that the pronunciation keys have to be non-ambiguous. This is the same reason why they don't need to use diacritic to indicate tapped intervocalic T or final dark L. (Clear L at syllabic final position does not exist.)

I did a search in my pronunciation dictionary and found that the combinations / -et / and / -el / do not exist. / -ed / and / -en / only exist when the spelling has an R between / e / and the following consonant. Since British English is non-rhotic, the corresponding American pronunciation would have an R before that consonant, resulting in / rd / and / rn /. So, / e / ONLY occurs before an R! As a result, using / er / in American English to represent the counterpart of the British English / e / is non-ambiguous after all!

After going through all these discussions, I finally found out the reasons.

Kooyeen, many thanks indeed for discussing this issue with me. Without your insights, I would not have been able to find out the underlying issues that has been troubling me.

EDIT:

It appears that / e / was the result of the influence of the following R sound on the / e / sound. It is therefore actually the equivalent of / er / in American English. However, because British English is non-rhotic, the R influence results in the / e / becoming a diphthong, i.e. a schwa is added after the / e / to become / e /.

EDIT 2:

While adding the above EDITed text, I just found that what I guessed was probably right.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/text-only/received-pronunciation/london/

The vowels of youth
Listen first to the vowel sound she uses in the words air, there, their, where, somewhere and parents. In traditional forms of RP, they would be pronounced with a diphthong â that is two vowel sounds. Older RP speakers would start with an <e> sound â as in bed â before drifting into a weak vowel rather like the initial sound in about. This type of pronunciation, also applied to words such as dare, hair and bear, was until relatively recently common in many English accents. The diphthong emerged once speakers began to omit the <r> sound at the end. Speakers throughout the UK once pronounced this <r> sound, but it is increasingly restricted to speakers in the West Country and far South West of England, a small area of Lancashire and most of Scotland and Ireland. It is also present in most US English accents. The <r> sound was initially replaced by the weak vowel at the end of the diphthong, but nowadays most younger RP speakers omit this final part of the diphthong and simply use a long <e> sound â thus shared is pronounced with exactly the same vowel as in shed, only the vowel is noticeably longer. This demonstrates perfectly how successive sound changes can radically alter the pronunciation of a set of words. Most RP speakers, like Michelle, now only distinguish between pairs such as fairs and fez or flared and fled simply by vowel length. Older speakers tend to use a diphthong for the first word in each pair.

It means that the Received Pronunciation that I have been learning (and indicated on all the dictionaries) is only that of the older generation! What a surprising finding from this simple question of fair-haired!

Re: W is a vowel

Alienvoord — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:59:04 GMT

shaved
(b) I really don't think that /w/ is a vowel-like sound at all... think of the difference in pronunciation between the word 'shah' and the name 'Shaw'. It's a subtle difference, but they produce different sounds.

In my dialect these are identical, but in some dialects they are different vowels. I believe that for some Americans, one is /A/ and one is /Q/ (in SAMPA).

shaved

The /h/ and the /w/ are functioning like "soft" consonants. In other words, neither of them can be pronounced without attaching a vowel sound to them, hence CONsonants

There is no /h/ and /w/ in the words "shah" and "shaw". There are the letters <h> and <w>, but it's a mistake to think that these letters are somehow determining which vowels you have in these words.