Linguistics 103 Summary of English Consonants and Vowels Hayes/Thatte General Phonetics Winter 2007 I. Consonants Place:/ Bilabial Labio- (Inter-) Alveo- lar Palato- Retro- Palatal Velar Labial- Glottal Manner: Dental Dental Alveolar flex Velar 1 STOPS voiceless p pot t tot k cot (/) voiced b bot d dot g got FRICATIVES voiceless f font T thought s sot S shot h hot voiced vVons ð though z zot Z vision AFFRICATES voiceless tÉS chalk voiced dÉZ jot NASALS (voiced) m Mott n not N song 2 5 3 APPROXIMANTS central ®,r , rot (”) j yacht w watt (voiced) lateral l lot 4 TAP (voiced) (R) otter 1 Not a phoneme of English, but commonly pronounced before vowels in emphatic speech; an apple [ən ˈʔæpl]. 2 Correct IPA for central alveolar approximant is [®]. Ladefoged uses a very broad transcription instead, namely [r]. In strict IPA, [r] is a tongue-tip trill. 3 In some English dialects, the “r” sound is a retroflex approximant, made by curling the tip of the tongue upward and backward. Check to see how you say this sound. 4 Occurs as the normal variant (allophone) of /t/ and /d/, when the preceding sound is a vowel, diphthong, or /®/, and the following sound is a stressless vowel; as in butter. Linguistics 103 Summary of English Consonants and Vowels 2 II. Vowels (where the relevant English vowel is a diphthong, it is so transcribed) Front Central Back (unrounded) (unrounded)unrounded rounded High (upper) i beat u boot (ˆ) Rose’s (lower) I bit U foot Mid (upper) eÉI bait ´ about oÉU boat 5 (lower) E bet √ but ç bought 6 Low Q bat (a) A bot Diphthongs: eÉI bait oÉU boat aÉI bite aÉU bout çÉI boy also: Œ’ Bert = stressed retroflexed mid central vowel, also called “syllabic r” ɚ butter = same as , but stressless Diacritics: » = primary stress (placed before the stressed syllable) « = secondary stress. (placed before the stressed syllable) « = syllabic (placed under [l] and [n] when they are syllabic) [«æl´»geIS´n] allegation [»æl´«geI ə] alligator [»Er´s«tl] Aristotle 5 Bought has [ç] only in some American dialects; many speakers have no [ç]; they use [] in bought and similar words. 6 Occurs only as the first element of the diphthongs [aI] and [aU]. .