Vowels

A vowel is a sound made with an open mouth, with no air blocked by the teeth, tongue, or lips. There are 14 vowels to learn in English.

We can describe differences between vowels by putting them in categories.
​
BACK / CENTRAL / FRONT

  • Back – made with your tongue pulled towards the back of your mouth 
  • Central – made with your tongue in the center of your mouth, not pulled forward or backward 
  • Front – made with your tongue pulled towards the front of your mouth and with your lips spread out 

HIGH / MID / LOw

  • High – made with your tongue raised near the roof of your mouth 
  • Mid – made with your tongue in the middle of your mouth, neither raised nor lowered 
  • Low – made with your tongue lowered in your mouth and with your jaw lowered 

TENSE / LAX

  • Tense – made with a tightened tongue 
  • Lax  – made with a relaxed tongue 

ROUND / UNROUND

  • Round – made with the lips forming a circle 
  • Unround – made with the lips spread out

STRESSED / UNSTRESSED

  • Stressed – longer, louder, and higher-pitched than other vowels in a word
  • Unstressed – shorter, quieter, and lower-pitched than the stressed vowel 

MONOPTHONG / DIPHTHONG

  • Monophthong – a single, pure vowel sound
  • Diphthong – a sound made by combining two vowels into one syllable
Home

©2024, Christine Wingate

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.