Description of vowels

Now we’ll move towards slight difficult but crucial topic. It is the ‘Classification of Vowel’ in English.

While consonant sounds are mostly articulated via closure or obstruction in the vocal tract, vowel sounds are produced with relatively free flow of air. They are all typically voiced. To describe and classify the vowel sounds we have to take following thing in to consideration.

(1) Position of Tongue: -

To describe vowel sounds we consider the way in which the tongue assumes the ‘Shapes” through which air-flow must pass without any friction. We can classify vowels into three categories taking into account the part of the tongue raised. And vowels thus produced can be front, back or central vowels.

(2) Height of the Tongue: -

The second important issue is the height of the tongue. When we utter a vowel sound we move our tongue at different levels from upper to lower. For example to utter some vowels we have to raise our tongue close to the palate and some times the tongue remains far enough from the palate. From this we can say whether the vowel uttered is open or close. There are eight main categories of vowels according to height of the tongue. They are called Cardinal Vowels and they are:
(A)Front Close Vowel, (B) Front Half close vowel, (C) Front Half Open Vowel, (D) Front Open Vowel, (E) Back Open Vowel, (F) Back Half Open Vowel, (G) Back Half Close Vowel, (H) Back Close Vowel.

(3) Position of Lips: -

A third criterion for the classification of vowel sounds is the position of lips. A simple unrounded or spread. Thus we describe vowels in following terms:
(1) Part of the tongue raised.
(2) The height to which the tongue is raised.
(3) The position of lips.
We can describe the vowel using the three term label. For example the vowel in the word ‘see’ is a ‘front close unrounded vowel’.

Dipthongs: -
Another category which we consider very briefly is ‘Dipthongs’. Dipthongs are nothing but vowel glides in them. Simply we can say there some vowel sounds which change their quality from one vowel to another. For example the word ‘cow’ when we utter the word, we sleeps from /a/ to /u/ this is called Dipthong. The vowel in the word ‘to’ do not change its quality during articulation. So, such vowels are called Monophthongs or pure vowels. Dipthong always occupies one syllable each.
So, we took a glimpse of phonetic structure of English. Now we will move towards another important topic.