American English Vowels

Inquisitor: “How many vowels are there in English?”

American: “Five. Or, six if you count the letter ‘y’.”

Inquisitor: “Ok, those are the vowels of written English. But I’m interested in the spoken language. How many vowels are there in spoken English?”

After some reflection, the American responds: “There are ten. A, E, I, O, and U can be either short or long.”

This, the hypnogogic truth we are taught in grade-school, is often where the conversation ends. But, unfortunately for would-be spelling reformists, language learners, and other inquisitive types, this is technically wrong and generally misleading.

So what would I answer? Probably something like this:

“You mean simple vowels, that is, those which may be sung out and identified at any point during the singing? Well then there are nine — or ten if you count the ‘errr’ sound. But if you allow complex vowels, those combinations of simple vowels sometimes called ‘diphthongs’, then there are between 14 and 19 — again depending on how you handle ‘errr’ sounds.”

—

Here’s a PDF of a General American Vowel Cheat-Sheet I’ve put together. It enumerates each of the aforecounted vowels, with example English words in which they resound, plus tips for French speakers to produce the English sounds properly. It includes some cursory notes on vowel length and tensing, both of which are underappreciated aspects of accent, useful to any student of spoken American English.

Now, we could take this to the next level up, we could do formant analysis, printing up graphs and diagrams and what-not. (And I’ve done this, by hacking the formant analysis of the Praat C sources — but that’s for another post.) But it would be also interesting to see how the phonological truth could be adapted, boiled-down (not watered-down), and otherwise adapted for school children. Could this help the natives too?