U.S. English Pronunciation Lesson 19: introduction to the dipthongs

U.S. English Pronunciation
Lesson 19: introduction to the dipthongs

In addition to the 12 vowel sounds of English, there are also several 'dipthongs' that are important to learn. Three of these are essential to speaking and understanding English, while the others are important to improving speech and accent reduction.

A 'dipthong' is really a complex sound with two vowel sounds pronounced in a row. The sounds are pronounced together quickly as one sound instead of two separate vowels. There are three dipthongs in English that are essential to learn because they are what linguists call 'phonemes'. Phonemes are meaningful distinctions. If you change the pronunciation of a phoneme, you usually change the meaning of a word. For example the word 'host' has a different pronunciation and meaning from the word 'hoist'. The other dipthongs are not meaningful distinctions, but simply variations in pronunciation. These dipthongs are, however, still important for learning English pronunciation. Many English words are commonly pronounced with dipthongs instead of simple vowel sounds. This will become clearer in the following lessons on dipthongs.

Keep in mind as you learn English pronunciation that English spelling is rather unpredictable with a multitude of exceptions and variations. The rules sometimes seem to lack a predictable pattern. Fortunately there are only a limited number of 'phonemes', or sounds. That's why these pronunciation lessons focus on the phonemes and try to give only non-exceptional spelling examples. This should make it easier for you to master the individual sounds as you progress and start to encounter variations and exceptions. Individual phonemes are represented by their International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol between forward slashes: / /.

The goal of this course is to help you learn English pronunciation in simple, easy-to-understand terms, while at the same time giving you enough familiarity with technical linguistic concepts to move on to other, more advanced topics. Try reviewing the previous pronunciation lessons (see links to the right).

Next lesson: the dipthongs /aI/, /au/, and /oI/ -->>



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