English I

Sounds in English

The English alphabet has 26 letters, made up of consonants and vowels. There are
five vowels (a, e, i, ,o, u) and the rest are all consonants. In English, pronunciation of words
centres upon syllables: a syllable is a unit of pronunciation which has one vowel sound, with or
without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word. For example, there are
two syllables in wa/ter and three in in/fer/no.

The international phonetic system (IPA)

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabet of phonetic notation designed to

capture all the different ways words in English can be pronounced, based on the Latin alphabet.

Consonant Sounds –
Vowel sounds –
Velar sounds - A velar consonant is a consonant that is pronounced with the back part of the
tongue against the soft palate, also known as the velum, which is the back part of the roof of the
mouth. Velar consonants in English are [k], [g] and [ŋ]. The consonant [k] is the most common
in all human languages.

Palatal Sounds - Palatal sounds are made with the tongue body (the big, fleshy part of your
tongue). The tongue body raises up towards the hard-palate in your mouth (the dome shaped
roof of your mouth) to form an effective constriction. An example of a palatal sounds in
English is /j/, usually spelt as <y>.

Retroflex Sounds - A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat,
concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate.
They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology.
Dental Sounds - Dental sounds involve the tongue tip (active articulator) making contact
with the upper teeth to form a constriction. Examples of Dental sounds in English are / θ, ð/. If
a sound is produced where the tongue is between the upper and lower teeth, it is attributed the
term 'interdental'.

Labial Sounds - Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active
articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and
labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in
English.

Glottal Sounds - The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many
spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨⟩.

Alveolar Sounds - Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the
superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the upper teeth.

Postalveolar Sounds - Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue
near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, farther back in the mouth than the alveolar
consonants, which are at the ridge itself but not as far back as the hard palate, the place of
articulation for palatal consonants.

Labiodental Sounds - Labiodental sounds involve the lower lip (labial) and upper teeth
(dental) coming into contact with each other to form an effective constriction in the vocal tract.
Examples of labiodental sounds in English are /f, v/.
Simple words
• Most of the words are a sequence of consonants and vowel sounds.
• CVCV papa, daddy, mom
• CVC dad, mom,
• VCVC
• CVV
• CCVC what, glass
• CVCC sink
• Words only with vowels sounds
• Eye /aai/

Consonants
• Sounds produced by modification of the flow of exhaling air in the
vocal tract
• /k/ – velar king, class
• /g/ -- velar great, glass
• /p/ -- bilabial pink, pure
• /b/ -- bilabial bliss, bless
• They have an inbuilt vowel sound ‘a’ with all of them.

Assimilation - Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants

or vowels) change to be more similar to other nearby sounds. It is a common type of
phonological process across languages. Assimilation can occur either within a word or
between words.
Clusters in English Words
Consonants

• Sounds produced by modification of the flow of exhaling air in the vocal tract
• /k/ – velar [-asp, - voice] king, class
• /g/ -- velar [-asp, + voice] great, glass
• /p/ -- bilabial [- asp, - voice] pink, pure
• /b/ -- bilabial [- asp, + voice] bliss, bless
• They have an inbuilt vowel sound ‘a’ with all of them.
Words
• Words are sequence of consonants and vowel sounds.
• CVCVCV papa, daddy, mom
• CVC dad, mom,
• VCVC
• CVV
• CCVC glass
• CVCC sink
• Sounds from same places of articulation do not come next to each other.
pb bp td
• Words only with vowels sounds
• Eye /aai/
Clusters of three consonants

• Spring /spring/ spr cccvc

• Stress /stres/ str cccvc
• Screw /skrue/ skr cccvv
• Splash /splash/ spl cccvc
• String /string/ str cccvc
• Scrub /skrub/ skr cccvc

Syllables
• A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds.
• Syllables have nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final
margins (typically, consonants).
• Words can have several syllables.
• One syllable words.
• Two two syllable word,
• Three syllable words,
• Four syllable words.

Words and Syllables

• One word may have one or more syllables

• Words with one syllables

• sun life, break, tongue

• Words with two syllables

• tiger (ti-ger), police (po-lice), between( bet-ween), marriage(mar-riage)

• Examples of three syllable words :

energy (e-ner-gii), capital (ka-pi-tal),

heritage (he-ri-teg), suffering (saf-far-ing)

• Examples of four syllable words:

Invisible(in-vi-si-ble), education (e-du-ke-shan),
aquarium (a-qua-rii-am), infinity (in-fi-ni-tii)

Syllables
• A syllable consists of three segments –
• nucleus, onset, rhyme, coda.
• Nucleus : a vowel or syllabic consonant, obligatory in most languages.
• Onset- a consonant or consonant clusters.
• Rhyme – contrasts with onset and splits into nucleus and coda.
• Coda - a consonant, optional in some languages, highly restricted or
prohibited in others.

Prefix - A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of
one word changes it into another word.

Suffix - a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case
endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the
conjugation of verbs.

Conversion - conversion is a word-formation process that assigns an existing word to a

different word class, part of speech, or syntactic category. This process is also called zero
derivation or a functional shift.

COMPOUNDING
When we use compounding, we link together two or more bases to create a new
word.

Nouns: car park, rock

Band

Adjectives: heartbreaking, sugar-free

Verbs: baby-sit, chainsmoke

Adverbs: good-naturedly, nevertheless

Stress in words –

Stress Patterns
Stress patterns in words are mostly unpredictable in English. However,
some general rules can be applied to many words.
• When a noun or adjective stems from a one-syllable word, (for example break
and friend), the stress usually stays on the syllable of the original word.
Example: break – BREAKable, friend – FRIENDly
Plural –

Rule—
Aspiration - In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the
release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents.

Aspiration in stressed syllables

•department /di PhAART ment/ (3)

•competition /kom pii Thii shan/ (4)
•decrease (v) /di KhRIIZ/ (2)
•decrease (n) /DI kriiz/ (2)
• Institution /in sti Thyu shan/ (4)