Search results for 'tag:Vowels tag:Pronunciation tag:Phonetics' matching tags 'Vowels', 'Pronunciation', and 'Phonetics'

Re: Vowels

tanit — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:47:14 GMT

Hi, For vowels in (British) English, you might try the BBC's phonetic chart: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/chart.shtml

Re: Pronunciation

raindoctor — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:47:37 GMT

There are two issues: (1) heuristics used in phonics (2) phonetics g: /g/, /dʒ/ c: /k/, /s/ /k/ is voiceless, whereas its counterpart /g/ is voiced. /s/ is voicelss; /dʒ/ is voiced. Velar consonants get softened (or voiced) before front vowels esp in derived-words: cf. electric vs electricity Given this background knowledge, what is your concern?

Re: Phonetic differences between English and Spanish

anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:23:45 GMT

The vowel in the English "family" is formed with the back of the tongue very high in the mouth (look in a mirror). The Spanish "a" is like the English in "Say 'AHHHH.'" The location of the tongue in the Spanish "a" is closer to the position of the English "u." That is probably why you think they sound the same.

Re: Welsh accent (to be more precise, Tom Jones's)

colombo — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:04:19 GMT

Instead of worrying about perceptions (auditory phonetics), try to produce variations (articulatory phonetics): how to produce a fronted /u:/ ? That seems a very good idea. I think I might try to change from one vowel to the other by knowing whether I must make it more to the front, to the back, more open... But I don't know how I can know whether I'm producig the right vowel, or any other. Are there mp3 recordings of isolated vowels that are long enough so I can try to adjust the vowel I produce to the vowel I hear, and then maintain it for some time? I should try to save them in my computer so I can practice at home.

Re: Welsh accent (to be more precise, Tom Jones's)

raindoctor — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:45:14 GMT

Focus on the variation of vowels in various accents: phonetic differences. Sometimes, you can see phonemic differences as is the case between BrE and AmE. Most of the transcriptions are broad, like the ones we see in dictionaries. Mastering narrow transcription, which requires you to train your ears to notice all variations/subtlities, is the key to understand variatiations.

Re: English and spanish phonetic sounds with their phonetic differences

anonymous — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:56:50 GMT

well the English D and T sound like a Spanish R (not double R but just R) - the Spanish J sounds like a English H - the Spanish L and English L don't sound alike (they are different sounds), and the same happened with the Spanish and English T (they are different sounds) - In English when one pronounce the letter "P" one relieses a puff of air, in Spanish you don't do that (that's what makes the Spanish and English T different too, by the way) - the English N and M's sounds are way longer than the Spanish ones - the Spanish Y and Spanish LL (or, double L) sound alike, and their sound is that of a English "J", unlike most people think, is the Spanish Y and double LL are not pronounce like an...

Re: Pronunciation

raindoctor — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:57:23 GMT

What's your point? I made an implicit point: it is not cognitively productive to remember pronounciation for every word. What learners should be taught: a set of heuristics to find possible pronunciations for a word. Mastery of phonetics (or how to produce bilabial fricative, etc) does not help much. English phonology helps. Since it is a 3-syllable word, it can have two variations: stress-unstressed-stressed; unstressed-stressed-unstressed. When a syllable gets stressed, it usually attracts consonants to the onset as well as the coda; it also allows for consonant clustering (wis-'con-sin vs. wi-'scon-sin). Suffixes also give a clue on where stress falls (for instance, one can predict where primary stress falls in...

Re: KK and phonics?

raindoctor — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:24:02 GMT

In phonics, people are brought to the attention that a set of words have the same vowel quality. In KK, this vowel quality is transcribed using IPA. If I am teaching kids, I dont want to burden them with IPA. Phonics consists of set of heuristics or generalizations, which are not true always. But they help you localize what the possible sounds are when they encounter a new word. We know how to pronounce astronomy: ə ˈstrɑn əmi. How to pronounce a word aptronomy. Kids usually say ə' ptrɑn əmi. This is where phonics fails us. English phonology helps: s r cluster is permitted in English; but not ptr. So, we need to split aptronomy into ap-tron-o-mi. The possible pronounciation is: æp ˈtrɑn ə mi

Re: How to pronounce Pacino, Scorsese and Sean

tanit — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:13:16 GMT

I won't argue with you, of course you're right, you're a native Italian! You can argue! After all, Italian has many variants and I can speak only for mine. After doing some search on the internet, I've found this dictionary where you can listen to the pronunciation of ro s a and to that of s ole (just type one word in the box, click on the result and press the red arrow next to the phonetic trancription of the word in the pop-up). I've also managed to find an easy list of rules to help you decide whether s should pronounced /s/ or /z/. This allows for an explanation of the pronunciation of the three s's in Scorsese : The first one is pronounced /s/ because it's at the beginning of the word (also,...

Re: Double consonants f, l, k, s, z in verb's infinitive

alpheccastars — Sat, 16 May 2009 02:09:19 GMT

It is just convention. English spelling is not 100% consistent or regular. There have been many attempts at spelling reform, but none so far has gained any traction. There is no "academy" for English, as there can be for other languages. The convention may be based on the origins of the words in Latin, Greek, Germanic, or others such as Old French. That being said, though, I tried to generalize a phonetic rule that fits. S and Z are voiced/unvoiced equivalents, and L, F, S, Z are all continuants. M, N are continuants, but they are also nasals. ck cannot be considered a doubling, it is a digraph, an alternate spelling of the K sound. There are no verbs (at least common ones) ending in J or V. When a verb ends in W, I...

Post

ecossais — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:55:30 GMT

Hi! Thank you for this interesting discussion and for your answer.Your opinion is important for me. First of all, my problem concerns teaching English as a second language. It's very bad that teachers instructing pupils how to pronounce /ʌ/ usually say that you should pronounce /o/ but not rounding your lips But in fact, the /ʌ/ is closer to /a/ in most dialects, not to /o/. Pronunciation of /dæm/ or /θɔːt/ varies in different ways in different regions, but /ʌ/ is not so vague. This is usually /a/ or /ɐ/ in RP, GenAm, AU, NZ (though, it differs from /æ/, /ɑ:/, /ɑ/, /ɒ/ and there's not any merge). You can find in the net the phonetic maps and see the contemporary position of the vowel. During last century linguists have changed...

Re: Vowel [ʌ] in modern English

ecossais — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:56:46 GMT

The vowel must always be pronounced the same, since it's an IPA symbol that describe a sound. IPA symbols don't change, they are defined that way, and they remain so, so that we can describe some sounds. Hmm... But don't you think this is a little bit eh...old-fashioned? Let's see. In older dictionaries (and in many books in linguistic, too) there weren't made the differences between /ɔ/ and /ɔ:/, /ə/ and /ə:/. But nowadays if you, using broad transcription, describe /ɜ:/ and /ɒ/ as /ə:/ and /ɔ/ your work would seem outdated. I think that not we must adjust to a defined set of IPA symbols but we use it to write phonemes(and phones) of our language properly so we can change one IPA symbol to another, if this set of...

Re: Vowel [ʌ] in modern English

kooyeen — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:48:22 GMT

Hi (and welcome to Englishforums Smile), As I know, in modern English the vowel is no more pronounced as... ouch! The vowel must always be pronounced the same, since it's an IPA symbol that describe a sound. IPA symbols don't change, they are defined that way, and they remain so, so that we can describe some sounds. What happens is that dictionaries use a set of symbols even if they don't represent the real pronunciation, so you have a kind of "phonemic transcription", and not real "phonetic transcriptions". For example, from a dictionary you can understand that "bug" and "sub" have the same vowel, or that "teacher" and "better" rhyme, but it doesn't tell...

Re: What is a syllable?

danielrams07 — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:15:41 GMT

syllable Segment of speech usually consisting of a vowel with or without accompanying consonant sounds (e.g., a , I , out , too , cap , snap , check ). A syllabic consonant, like the final n sound in button and widen , also constitutes a syllable. Closed (checked) syllables end in a consonant, open (free) syllables in a vowel. Syllables play an important role in the study of speech and in phonetics and phonology . girl have 1 go have 1 rain 2 famous 2 hour 1 double 2 prison 2 A syllable is a basic unit of written and spoken language. It is a unit consisting of uninterrupted sound that can be used to make up words. For example, the word hotel has two syllables: ho and tel . These will be marked here as in ho/tel . Counting Syllables ...

Re: "a" or "an" before a consonant acronym

anonymous — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:00:16 GMT

I agree. It actually really vexes me when people use "a" in front of an acronym. Even though the previous post has been up for quite some time, maybe someone will run across this and find it helpful. Here is my reasoning: So, yes, we all know the English language is supposed to be one of the most grammatically difficult languages around. But when you think about the rules, almost all of them have some basis in logic. The reason that the English language provides two indefinite articles (both "a" and "an") is based in phonetics. It is difficult to pronounce "a" in front of any word beginning in a vowel. For example, saying "a apple" or "a egg" requires a lot more gutteral...

Re: vowel length distinction before voiced or unv. consonants

zerox — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:00:31 GMT

I think the terms you are looking for are called 'vowel length' and 'vowel duration'. As it has been mentioned, vowels before fortis sounds tend to be shorter because the fortis sound needs more power, that is, it is aspirated. Now, vowel length is a phenomenon in which different vowels are placed in the same phonetic environment (minimal pairs: /pit/ vs. /pi:t/), whereas vowel duration refers to the exact amount of time the same vowel lasts in different environments ( change of a fortis consonant to its lenis counterpart, for example). Obviously, the differences in duration are hard to notice by ear, but they still affect one's pronunciation. These three examples should expound the difference with the vowel sound:...

Re: Ordinarily, temporarily, momentarily

paul — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:51:19 GMT

I am somewhat confused about the proper British pronunciation of words like "ordinarily", "temporarily", and "momentarily". As I understand it, ... American pronunciation and stress the "a" in these words. What is common and what is considered correct British? Claus I do not think either the Brits or those in the U.S. omit any vowel sound in these words completely. In other words, there are no silent syllables in these words.Theoretically, every syllable in a word is uttered with a 'stress level' different from that of the other syllables in the same word. But for practical considerations, we could say, a word with four syllables or more probably has a syllable with a primary stress and...

Re: Which language is most difficult language for people to learn?

anonymous — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:44:26 GMT

I would strongly disagreee with Hoa Thai's assertion that French is relatively easy to learn and that is it spelled as it is sounded. It most certainly is not. There are loads of homophones in the language. For instance the 'ay' sound can be represented by the spellings 'ai', 'ais', ait', 'e' with an acute accent, infinitive 'er', 'es', 'et', 'ez' and probably some other combinations that I can't think of just now. If this isn't confusing and non-phonetic then I don't know what is. Also, the fact that most final consonants, even some final double consonants, are not pronounced must make for confusion, eg the non-pronunciation of the final 's',...

Re: IPA and the phonetic alphabet [was: Re: "Yuuse" means /yuus/, yaw? ...pitch roll.]

john varela — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:47:16 GMT

With the stress on the second vowel of 'romeo', as I was taught it. The words themselves are chosen to be readily distinguishable in poor hearing conditions, and the ordained stress patterns are designed to aid this distinction. If I'm not mistaken, the change from WW2's Able, Baker, Charlie to Alfa, Bravo, Cocoa (later reverted to Charlie) was for better understanding by non-native-English speakers in NATO. John Varela Trade NEW lamps for OLD for email.

Re: IPA and the phonetic alphabet [was: Re: "Yuuse" means /yuus/, yaw? ...pitch roll.]

paul wolff — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:39:47 GMT

The "NATO phonetic alphabet" lets you spell a word in ... will let you spell "truck" "tango romeo uniform charlie oscar" That would be "tango romeo uniform charlie kilo". With the stress on the second vowel of 'romeo', as I was taught it. The words themselves are chosen to be readily distinguishable in poor hearing conditions, and the ordained stress patterns are designed to aid this distinction. Paul

Re: Comments on my pronunciation needed

caedmon — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:39:06 GMT

Samuraifingers: I'm sorry if I made it seem like I was expecting a professional assessment of my pronunciation. I am really only looking for brief comments such as "this or that vowel has the wrong quality" or "too much aspiration" or "too little aspiration" - things that I suppose will strike a native speaker fairly immediately when he hears me speak. Here are some particular concerns I've been having, for instance: - The distinction between voiced and voiceless sibilants (eyes-ice, ridge-rich) does not exist in my native language. I noticed that I had been hyperarticulating these in English, and sounding somewhat pedantic as a result. - The secondary stress in compounds is still unclear to me. - I...

Re: Easy as Pie, Almost!

anonymous — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:30:12 GMT

Frequently listen to English spoken by native speakers and repeat them. Watch English movies, listen to music, audio clips, BBC news and presentations. Control your rate of speech to get the correct intonation and rhythm of English. Use your dictionary.Familiarize yourself with the phonetic symbols used for different words in the dictionary and look up the correct pronunciation.This method helps in neutralizing an accent tremendously. Make a list of commonly used words that are difficult to pronounce. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes. Read English newspaper regularly. Work on how to pronounce the vowel and consonant sounds.Mostly vowel sounds play vital role for accent variation. Hence pronounce the...

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...

"an eulogy" or "a eulogy"?

paul — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:13:57 GMT

As per phonetics theory, I've been told one should use the indefinite article "a" before words beginning with a consonant and "an" before words beginning with a vowel or a diphthong. And the sound "y" ( or / j / in phonetic script) as in "eulogy", "university", "European" etc. is to be treated as a consonant (though in certain contexts one would also call it a "semi-vowel"). Why is it that I still find "an" preceeding this sound in certain write-ups generating combinations such as "an eulogy", and "an university" ? Are these instances of incorrect usage? Paul.

Re: fair-haired

kooyeen — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:58:24 GMT

Hi, the American Pronunciation you found is ok, and Merriam-Webster is the best (in my opinion) to check American pronunciations. The thing is you have to learn how to read phonetic transcriptions in the dictionaries you use, because often every dictionary uses its own conventions. Also, dictionaries don't give perfect and accurate phonetic transcriptions, but they are more like "phonemic transcriptions", if that's the term and I'm not mistaken. I'll give you some examples: RED - IPA from Longman: /r ed/ - Wrong! To be accurate, it should be more like /ɹ ɛd/ or / ɻ ɛd/. Then why isn't it written that way? Because 100% accurate transcriptions are not necessary (but it would be nice if they were given),...

Re: ae pronunciation: When is 'u' in current as 'u' in 'curly' and when as 'u' in 'cut'?

kooyeen — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:05:13 GMT

Hi, well, I think the original poster was contrasting two different pronunciations, one with an r-colored schwa (as in "curly"), and the other with just a simple schwa (as in "cut"). So, without using any phonetic transcriptions (which can be confusing without explaining the conventions... ) I was saying that I think for most Americans "current" starts the same way as "curly", with an r-colored schwa. So, I think all of these have the same vowel for most AmE speakers: Curly, Curry, Hurry, Sir, Bird, Current, Worry...

Re: Should I pay attention to syllables?

kooyeen — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:49:04 GMT

Hi Avangi, it's pretty complicated, I'll try to explain it better. I'll use an equivalent phonetic transcription to avoid IPA, because I heard not everyone can see the symbols. MW breaks the words into syllables in phonetic transcriptions according to how the words would be pronounced syllable by syllable, unlike many other dictionaries I have seen. Its transcriptions are different from all the others, and they seem much more accurate to me. A little example... Situation: sich-oo-ay-shun --> American Heritage, Longman Dictionary of C. E., Oxford Advanced Learner D., etc. sih-chuh-way-shun -> Merriam Webster I believe MW's transcriptions are more like what a native speaker would say if they had to pronounce words very slowly and...

Re: standard pronunciation of American or British English?

privateenglishportal — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:39:35 GMT

Hi, It has been my experience that students become lost when consulting dictionaries with regard to phonetic symbols as many times each one uses different phonetic symbols. This has caused much grief and I just tell my online students to stay away from it and try to spell the pronunciation out in English. Example: worked ( t) played (d) motivated (id) Now this does become more complicated with vowel sounds and vowel sound combinations(dipthongs), but be creative!!!!!! e.g. 'about' ( the ' ou ' is just the same as saying c ow or n ow ) If you intend to teach English or linguistics, then by all means please continue with the phonetics. If not, save yourself some time. Regards, Steve Ford ...

Re: Can anyone give me the phonetic guide for American English

kooyeen — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:43:59 GMT

Hi David, here you can find some stuff about American English. Vowels, consonants, lots of stuff... http://evaeaston.com/pr/home.html On that website there's also a link to this page, where the states are pronounced. http://evaeaston.com/pr/states.html If you need to know how to pronounce a word in American English (names of states and countries included), you can look it up on Merriam Webster online. You can also listen to the audio clips on this dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/ If you want to know more about American English (most important pronunciation features), you can check out this website. It's American Accent Training. There's some free stuff. If you can get that course somehow... it's useful. Check it out:...

Re: Which language is most difficult language for people to learn?

hoa thai — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:43:06 GMT

CalifJim wrote: I read somewhere that Mario Pei, the linguist, tried to learn a different language every year. He supposedly claimed that Vietnamese was the most difficult. CJ I disagree with the linguist Mario Pei not because I am a Vietnamese. It is because I have seen, in my country, a couple of TV hosts and many shop owners speak our language fluently and write better than most of our people do. Amazingly, all of them have lived in Vietnam for only a few years. For instance, Joe Ruelle, who has been in Vietnam for only 3 years or so, has his own blog written in perfect Vietnamese and speaks the language without a foreign trace. People say that Joe is a Vietnamese who had plastic surgery in order to...

Re: How would you pronounce these foreign names?

colombo — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:40:22 GMT

I suppose demicjusz is interested in how those words are pronounced by people who speak English, so I don't think my opinion here would be useful, since my spoken English doesn't contain many sounds apart from those that belong also to Spanish (so you can imagine my accent). With my nil knowledge of phonetic transcription, if I wanted to tell you how I'd pronounce the words in demicjusz's list (with my Spanish accent, remember), all I'd have to do is copy the list again, perhaps with a couple of changes here and there. Besides, an English-speaking person would not pronounce my transcription as I'd do, so I'm afraid it's no use my writing it. However, I'd like to make a comment about "Fortaleza", which is a Spanish word. Demicjusz...

Re: Speaking Teaching Books

kooyeen — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:06:40 GMT

Hi, yes, there are books that deal with stress, intonation, and pronunciation. I've read "American Accent Training" by Ann Cook. There's really a lot of stuff in that book (and on the 5 CDs). I haven't tried any other books anyway, so I can only tell you about that one. It treats American English, not British English or any other variety. Generally speaking, it's a really good book and I would recommend it. Some points (just my opinion): She (Ann Cook) makes you notice almost all the features of English that you've never noticed (stress, intonation, liaisons, word reductions, contractions, vowels, tapped t... ) Five CDs for audio lessons (she reads most of what's in the book, so you can listen while reading). Plus, she speaks very...

Re: write and written

califjim — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:10:36 GMT

It seems to me that you are wrestling with the "Second-Letter Rule", which says that a single vowel letter (i.e., not combined with another vowel letter in a digraph) is pronounced tense if the second letter after it is another vowel letter, lax otherwise. ( lady, caddie, hope, hop, hoping, hopping, June, junk, bite, bit, bitty, bitten, ... ) Unfortunately, this rule has only limited application, typically in one-syllable words and in final stressed syllables of polysyllabic words. And the rule never works when v is involved because v is virtually never doubled. ( *livved ! *givven ! *devvil !) Several other cases also conspire to make the rule less than universal. The Second-Letter Rule works for write and written , but not...

/a:/ & /o/

eyeseeyou — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 19:14:57 GMT

According to a book on American English pronunciation ('Lesson 12: Central and Back Vowels', page 136. I don't know the name of the book, though), /a/ is the vowel of father, box or calm. However, almost every dictionary out there establishes a difference between /a:/ and /o/, which would be the equivalento to what the book calls /a/. I find it a conflciting message. Or are the sounds of /a:/ and /o/ alike after all as the book indicates? This way, /a:/ is found in arm , father and /o/ is found in hot , rock. Note I chose to write the phonetics symbols in the ASCII code.

Re: phonetic transcribing

marvin a. — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 06:18:28 GMT

Well, it depends on how you pronounce them. For example, you pronounce "go" as whereas I would say or . I would also use a schwa for "to": instead of saying . Thirdly, I would pronounce brothers as . I would also say rather than for "new". So you see it all depends on how you pronounce these words. Your pronunciation would be different than mine. You have to transcribe it how *you* say it. "Had" would be /hæd/ in most dialects. "Been" would be or if you say it as "bean" or "bin" respectively "Hot" -- depends on which vowel you use. It's very variable in different dialects. I would say it or . Some dialects would say (RP I think) or (NCVS shifted Northern Midwestern). "Summer" I would guess because you don't pronoucne the...

Re: how to pronounce 'sp', 'st' and 'sk' in the middle of the word?

kooyeen — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:34:55 GMT

Hi, this is interesting, it reminds me of something I read in a book for improving pronunciation (the famous "American Accent Training"). The title of the paragraph is "Spoon or Sboon?" She (the author) say: "Say spoon. Now say sboon. Hear how they sound the same?" This is similar to your p/b problem. Anyway, I disagree, spoon and sboon sound similar to me, but not the same, and people say spoon, not sboon. She go on saying: "Hear how they sound the same? This is why I'd like you to always convert the preposition to to duh when you are speaking, no matter what comes before it (voiced or unvoiced sound)." I have to disagree again. I don't think to becomes duh after unvoiced consonants. Examples: "Way duh go!" (ok, vowel sound), "I...

Re: I'm desperate! I need help :(

tartan — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:39:28 GMT

8. Why do you say “She is a one-eyed teacher” and not “ She’s an one eyed teacher”? (Focus on a phonetic explanation) The article an is used before vowel sounds, not vowel letters. The word one is pronounced wun . The w is not a vowel sound even though the o in o-n-e is a vowel. So a must be used before one . 9. Miss Justine Fair listened to the two Chilean students read their passages. One of them had a strong accent . The second student had no accent at all. Who got the best mark? Why? (Focus on a Phonetic explanation) Accent is a form of mispronunciation, of giving vowels and consonants different values from their standards. Mastery of a language requires control over the sounds of the language. 10. One of the...

Re: Phonetic Transcription

anonymous — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 04:07:18 GMT

GUSTAVO ZAPATA CONTRASTIVE PHONETICS CLASS UIVERSITY OF ANTIOQUIA (COLOMBIA) SOME OF THESE SITES MIGHT BE OF SOME HELP ENJOY! VOWELS PETER LADEFOGED USA http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter3/amengvowels.html VOWELS PETER LADEFOGED SITE UK (BBC ENGLISH) http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter3/bbcenglish.html VOWELS LINGUISTICS COURSES RESOURCE http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/phonetics/vowelmap/index.html PHONENTIC SYMBOLS AND THEIR CORRESPONDING PRONUNCIATION (A-B)

colombo — Thu, 18 May 2006 11:58:03 GMT

Thanks once again! CalifJim wrote: You heard correctly: derision and vision have the /Z/ sound. mansion and pension have the /S/ sound. The "s" is intervocalic in the first two of these (between vowels); the "s" is between the consonant "n" and the vowel "i" in mansion and pension . All right, so I understand that the rule of " In -sion or -sure, the S is /Z/. vision, treasure " is right for intervocalic "s", while /Z/ must be changed to /S/ when there is a consonant before the "s". CalifJim wrote: The /Z/ also is the pronunciation of the "z" in azure (related to Spanish azul , by the way), and of the "zi" in glazier , and of the "s" in treasure, measure, pleasure, and leisure . Try your dictionary for those....