Colin Monroe: Single Vowel Sound

00:09 As I mentioned in a previous video, when we think about the alphabet we normally think

00:14 of there being 5 vowels A, E, I, O, U. However, when it comes to pronunciation, there

00:24 are many vowel sounds and these sounds can be spelt in different ways which can be a

00:29 little inconsistent. This makes things difficult when learning

00:33 English especially as in many other languages the vowels are pronounced more consistently

00:39 with how they they are spelt. There are 12 sounds that we will be looking

00:43 at in this video and they are the single vowels or sometimes called; monophthongs.

00:50 The place of each symbol on the chart tells us something about how it is produced.

00:56 Remember! Pronunciation is physical and as we go through these sounds you need to think

01:00 about these three questions; Is your mouth open, closed or in the middle?

01:06 What is the position of your tongue? What shape are your lips?

01:12 For the sounds on the top row the mouth is almost closed

01:16 /i:/, /ɪ/, /ʊ/, /u:/

01:23 For the sounds on the bottom row the mouth is almost wide open.

01:26 /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɑ:/ and /ɒ/

01:34 For the sounds on the left, our tongue is near the front teeth.

01:39 /i:/, /e/ and /æ/, When we get to the right, it has moved back

01:48 /u:/, /ɔ:/ and /ɒ/

01:54 Lets look at some examples words for each sound.

02:00 /i:/, as in "me", "these", "need" and "be".

02:11 /ɪ/ as in "with", "this", "if" and "think".

02:22 /ʊ/ as in "put", "would", "look", and "woman".

02:31 /u:/ as in "to", "you", "new" and "who".

02:41 Do you see how the position on the chart relates to where the sound comes from?

02:48 On the second row the mouth is open a little more.

02:53 /e/ as in "get", "when", "well" and "very".

03:02 /ə/ as in "the", "about", "could" and "us".

03:11 /ɜ:/ as in "her", "work", "learn", and "word".

03:20 /ɔ:/ as in "or", "also", "more", and "call".

03:30 Now lets look at the bottom row where our mouth should be almost wide open.

03:36 /æ/ as in "have", "that", "as", and "can".

03:47 /ʌ/ as in "but", "up", "one", and "much".

03:56 /ɑ:/ as in "start", "ask", "large" and "after".

04:07 /ɒ/ as in "of", "on", "from" and "not".

04:17 So that is all the single vowels. Obviously there are a lot more examples but the examples

04:22 in this video are some of the most common words.

04:26 The important thing to remember is that pronunciation is physical.

04:30 Well thanks for watching. I hope you found it useful.

04:33 Check out the video description for links to our website where you can find free and

04:38 premium material related to this video. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Skype.

04:44 If you have any comments or questions get in touch.