ALL the VOWEL SOUNDS in ENGLISH

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Do you know how many vowel sounds there are in English? There are five vowel LETTERS (a, e, i, o, u), but how many actual SOUNDS? In this class, I’ll give you the full list of vowel sounds, together with sample words and phonetic symbols from the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). This is a good opportunity to test yourself, to make sure you’re pronouncing each one correctly!

Watch all of Gill's English pronunciation videos here:

In this lesson:
00:00 English has A LOT of vowel sounds!
02:34 Hear the 19 vowel sounds in English
07:57 Review

Transcript:
Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson is on the vowel sounds in English and in British English in particular. There are maybe two or three other ones in American English, but we're just looking at the British English today, which is plenty because there are 19 on my list here. So, you might think 19 is a lot, and it is a lot. When you think that the actual letters, the vowel letters in the alphabet, there are just five of them, A, E, I, O, and U. And I know in a language like Spanish, you just have the five vowel sounds that come from those letters, which makes it much easier to know how to pronounce words in Spanish. But in English, it's kind of the opposite, that each letter that you find in the spelling of a word, it could be pronounced in several different ways so that anything with an A in it, in different words, it will be a different sounding vowel sound from that A letter.

So, what we have here on the board are 19 vowel sounds, the main ones in British English, and we've got an example word in the left-hand column to demonstrate what that vowel sound sounds like. And I've put the phonetic symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet at the side here as well. You don't have to learn these. You may know them and find them useful, but don't worry if you don't understand the symbols, they're just there to show that each of these vowel sounds is different and has its own symbol. You don't have to learn them. Okay. And then the words we've got here as examples are very familiar words, I hope. They're not obscure words. So, okay, so let's have a look.

First of all, we have the word "bad". So, "a" as in "bad", that's one use of the letter "a" as a vowel sound, "bad". Then we have this word "calm". So, "ah" is another vowel sound, "ah". It's a big, open "ah", like when you go to the dentist and say "ah", or the doctors, and they want to see down your throat. "Ah". Okay? So, "ah", "ah". And then we have an "o" here, which is "pot", so it's a short "o", "o". The thing about English vowel sounds, they're usually either short or long, so we have short and long vowel sounds. So, "ah" is short, "ah" is long, "o" is short.

"Bite", so the "i" in "bite", "i", there's the symbol for that, that's a longer vowel sound.

"Owl" in "now", that's another long vowel sound, "owl".

"Caught", so "aw", that's another long vowel sound. Okay? "Oy" in "boy", another long vowel sound.

"Eh" as in "bed", that's a short vowel sound again, "eh", "bed". Okay.

"There", so "air", "air", that's longer again. You can tell it's longer because it takes longer to say it. Okay, as simple as that. "A" as in "make", "a", so that's still a long vowel sound.

Then we have "a" as in "about", it's not the "ow" here, it's "a", "a", which is called "schwa", you've probably heard of "schwa" because it comes a lot in English words, so "a", "about", and it comes at the ends of words as well, words like "baker", "butcher", "writer", "doctor", the "uh", "uh", "uh" at the end, so "uh", "bout", "doctor".

Okay. "Note", so "o" is a longer vowel sound, "note". "Bird", so "uh" is a longer sound again.

"Sheep", so people often have difficulty making the difference in sound between "sheep" and you just have to make it longer, "ee", "ee", it is a double "e" in the spelling, so that's the symbol for it. "Sheep", and then this is a short "i", "ship", "ship", so just say it more quickly, "sheep" and "ship", and you'll be able to make the difference between the two. Okay.

"Boot", so "oo" is a longer sound, "boot". And then "put", so "oo", "oo", "oo" is quite short, "put", "oo".

And then this one, this is a strange one because I only know this one word that has this particular vowel sound in it, and not everybody pronounces it this way anyway, but going by the symbol, this is pronounced "oo", "oo", so it's almost two. It is two vowel sounds put together. "Poor", "poor", and I think only some... A small percentage of English speakers pronounce it that way. A lot of people just pronounce it "paw", "paw", so it would be more like the "or" in "court". […]