Questions tagged [diphthongs]
A sound formed by the combination of two vowel sounds in a single syllable. (From http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/diphthong)
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True realization of /i/ in American English: Is it really [ɪi]?
I have read in different places that the latter glide-like realization is the only one that exists in American English. Is this a regional thing? If yes, would you say it occurs in western US English?
...
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1answer
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American accents where /æ/ becomes [eɪ] before /ŋ/. Does /æ/ become [eɪ] before /m/ and /n/ too?
I know that in Californian accent, /æ/ is sometimes realized as [eɪ] only before /ŋ/. So words like hang, bang, rang, sang, gang, which normally end with /æŋ/, end with [eɪŋ]. The reason why it ...
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Is the diphthong /aʊ/ generally realized as [ɑʊ] in British English?
I noticed that the diphthong /aʊ/ is pronounced by most British English speakers as [ɑʊ] (I may be inaccurate here).
You can see the vowel /a/ on the vowel diagram below:
I understand this diagram ...
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1answer
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Why do Southerners pronounce “naked” differently?
I was watching a TV show and this guy from Tennessee pronounces naked as /'nekɪd/, without the diphthong /eɪ/ in the first syllable, and instead pronounced as a single /e/ vowel.
Dictionary ...
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1answer
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Why does the diphthong /aʊ/ not occur before /k/, /m/, /p/, /b/, /g/ etc?
I have noticed that the diphthong /aʊ/ occurs before certain consonants. We have:
/aʊd/ in loud
/aʊt/ in out
/aʊs/ in house
/aʊn/ in town
/aʊtʃ/ in pouch
/aʊl/ in owl
BUT, we don't have /aʊp/, /aʊb/,...
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1answer
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Are English diphthongs nasalized before nasals?
I learned that vowels are often nasalized before nasals (Nasalization). It means that the velum is lowered when the vowel is produced in the mouth and most of the air comes out through nose. For ...
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What is the difference between /ʌɪ/ and /aɪ/ in English?
Is there any difference between the two diphthongs in English IPA transcriptions?
If I search a word in the Cambridge dictionary, it gives /aɪ/ for both UK English and US English.
For example, the ...
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1answer
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‘Twas good until ‘twasn’t
Since society generally seems to want 2 condense & abbreviate the English language, why don’t we use the words “‘twas” “‘twasn’t” (Which is not even a recognized word, btw!!) more often than we do?...
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Reduction of diphthongs to short vowels (/waɪz/ -> /'wɪz.əd/)
I've noticed this phenomenon / process in many words where a diphthong (or a long vowel as well?) reduces to a short vowel when it's inflected.
Consider the following examples:
Pronounce /...
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1answer
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American English: Gliding of the long “ee” sound: [i] to [ɪi]
I have noticed that Americans have (broadly speaking) two ways of pronouncing the long "ee" vowel as in "fleece".
A simple [i] that ends with the same quality it starts with: listen to user ...
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2answers
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Do /ɪə/, /eə/, /ʊə/ diphthongs actually exist in General American as phonemes?
The Handbook of English Pronunciation. (Marnie Reed, John Levis referring to J.C. Wells)
Аs the pronunciation of most speakers is rhotic, there are no centring
diphthongs, because the vowels /ɪə,...
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2answers
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Which diphthong takes place in 'desirous'?
The phonetic transcription for desirous (in its BrE pronunciation) can be written as [dɪˈzʌɪərəs]. I wonder which diphthong—ʌɪ or ɪə—takes place in this word? Maybe here we can see a kind of haplology?...
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“Extra W” sound in words
I've wonder that in some sentences, or words, even though phonetically you don't have a 'W' sound, you can still hear some type of extra w' sound. So for example.
The phrase: "Do it". /du ɪt/ will ...
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2answers
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Is there a hidden [y] vowel sound in /u:/?
My native language is Danish, with its gigantic number of vowel sounds, and this undoubtedly affects how I hear English vowels. However, one phenomenon in English has bothered me for many years, ...
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Why are there 4 ambiguous phonetic symbols in IPA representations of English?
I'm interested in phonetics in order to speak as properly as possible. And here's the thing, there are four vowels with ambiguous symbols:
The first problem is the sound [ɛ] like in dress: /drɛs/ ...
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How many diphthongs do we have? [duplicate]
How many diphthongs are there in English?
Does the word cute have a diphthong?
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Psychology of diphthongs
First of all, technically this probably should be at the English Language Learners site, because I'm an English learner, but my intuition says I'll probably get more useful answers here because of my ...
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Does English have (or has it had) the diphthongs /uɪ, ʌɪ/?
Modern English has some diphthongs ending in /-ɪ/, as in *oy/oi of "boy/voice", *ay/ā of "bay/ace", *ey/ī of "eye/ice", etc. But I haven't found the diphthongs /uɪ, ʌɪ/ (or even /ʊɪ/).
Does Modern ...
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Is there any word with two consecutive monophthongs whose symbols could be combined to a diphthong? [closed]
For example, ɔ and ɪ in one word one after another. Note that I talking about a situation where the symbols could be combined as written l, not the sounds. IPA does not have explicit different written ...
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1answer
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Which English words feature reduction of diphthongs like /eɪ/ to /i/?
Consider the following examples:
karaoke as /ˈkæ.ɹiˌəʊ.ki/
Israel as /ˈɪz.ɹi.əl/
al-Qaida as "alky aida"
Monday as "mundy"
Friday as "fridy"
and possibly:
Capernaum as /kəˈpɜːɹ.ni.əm/
Sinai as /...
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Is “in-TEST-eyen” a valid pronunciation for “intestine”?
Is "in-TEST-eyen" /ɪnˈtestaɪn/ a valid pronunciation for "intestine"? I looked up "intestine" in MacMillan, Oxford, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster and even the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, none of ...
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2answers
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Are R-colored diphthongs phonemes or not?
There are some sounds called the "R-colored diphthong" in English, such as [or] sound in "court" or the [ir] sound in "clear".
My question is simple: are these R-colored diphthongs regarded as ...
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3answers
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What is the word for the double vowel in “coordinate”?
The word coordinate has two vowels in it, that would ordinarily make the /u/ sound. Probably because of the word's etymology (Latin co- (“together”) + ordinare (“arrange”)) it is not pronounced as ...
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0answers
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In which vowel do the diphthongs [aʊ] and [aɪ] start?
Surfing the web, I found the following explanations on how to produce the diphthongs [aʊ] and [aɪ]:
"/aʊ/ as in all the words of "How now brown cow!". The starting position is the vowel sound /æ/ as ...
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3answers
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Not fully pronounced oʊ (ō) sound in some words
Words like so, no, vocabulary, and don’t all contain the long o sound inside them. But I regularly hear native English speakers pronouncing the [oʊ] sound in these words (and some others containing ...
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0answers
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Is the expanded form of “UTC” ever spelled with an diæresis?
I've always seen "UTC" expanded as Coordinated Universal Time. In addition, both the Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica entries, as well as pretty much every reference to it I've ever seen that I ...
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Pronunciation of diphthongs in English
I found a few similar questions, but none of them gave me the answer to this.
I'm a native Serbian, so I have problems understanding diphtongs, because Serbian has none of them.
Serbian has only five ...
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Do we need to put extra sound W or J in front of L in the case of /ei+L/ or /ee+L/ or /ai+L/ or /oo+L/ or /oi+L/ in American English?
Ok, let see the sale /seɪl/, that is from IPA but when speak American English, do we have to put /seɪ-jl/ (sound like sei jo)
Similarly, feel /fiːl/ will become /fiː jl/
or mile /maɪl/ will become /...
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Does English really have triphthongs?
Does English really have triphthongs?
EDIT/TDLR: It appears that quite a few people have misunderstood this question. In a nutshell, it is asking why many sources, even scholarly ones, claim that the ...
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2answers
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Are vowels most often pronounced long or short?
English vowels can have two (or more, many more) different pronunciations:
A : /eɪ/, mate or /ɑː/, mat
E : /i:/, mete or /ɛ/, met
I : /aɪ/, mite or /I/, mitt
O : /oʊ/, mote or /ɒ/, moth
U : /juː/, ...
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2answers
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Nasalization in IPA
I am learning IPA to learn the English pronunciation.
When "n" is inserted after a vowel and it is not followed by another vowel, how to know if /n/ is pronounced or it is only a mark to nasalize the ...
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Which is the correct phonetic transcription of the word play, [ple] or [plei]?
In some books, the long "a" found in words like say, play, etc. are transcribed as /sei/, /plei/ respectively but in some others the same words are transcribed /se/ and /ple/. Which one is correct? ...
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Are there any words pronounced with an unstressed short monophthong at the end of word that are not /ə/?
Following my question Are there any words in English pronounced with /e/ at the end? I was wondering if there are any words pronounced with an unstressed short monophthong at the end of word that are ...
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5answers
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What's the correct pronunciation of “Israel”?
From Google I have gathered there are several ways for pronounce Israel, I have pronounced it is-rye-el. From googling it some seem to indicate it acceptable and another says it is vulgar and should ...
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2answers
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What is the name of the ɔʏ sound?
What's the English name of the oi sound written as "eu" and commonly found in Germanic words like Deutschland, and names like Euler and von Neumann?
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Vowel is to diphthong as consonant is to?
While reading about diphthongs in a different question today, I noticed that while the word "diphthong" doesn't seem to contain any actual diphthongs, it does contain 3 sets of consonant groupings.
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How does one pronounce /oʊ/ in /oʊvərˈsiz/ in American English?
Today when I checked the Oxford American Dictionary for the pronunciation of overseas, I got this in IPA: /oʊvərˈsiz/.
According to my understanding, the /ʊ/ phoneme is pronounced o or something like ...
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How Many Diphthongs Are There In English?
I was talking to a person who said that there were only two. I think she said that the "ou" in house is one of the two.
I told her that the way the letter "i" is pronounced is a diphthong, and she ...
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Pronunciation of letter y: asylum vs syrup
I want someone to clarify if there is a rule about how to pronounce the letter Y
I've read in another stackexchange post that when it is in a Greek-origin word it is pronounced as uh e.g. analysis, ...
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1answer
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Distinctive features of English diphthongs
I am looking for a table of distinctive features for English dipthongs along the lines of that available for other vowels here. I don't trust my purely book learned linguistic skills to produce an ...
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How Do You Pronounce “Tuesday”?
My friends have a variety of ways of pronouncing "Tuesday":
Tooos-day
Tyu-sday
Choose-day
Which one is considered correct?
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2answers
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Can vowels be combined in English without forming diphthongs?
Usually all combinations of vowels in English function as diphthongs. Are there any combinations of vowels in English that do not function as diphthongs? if there are no such examples - I would be ...
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2answers
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Why is “eye” pronounced so strangely?
This is either a spelling or a pronunciation anomaly; I'm not sure which. Why is "eye" pronounced as the letter "I"?
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How many syllables are there in the word “fire”?
We were making up Haiku, and there was some disagreement about the number of syllables in "fire." Now granted Haiku isn't technically about syllables (see on), so technically it was a meaningless ...
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Whence came the different varieties of the “long i” diphthong?
What is the origin of “long long i” before voiced consonants (the [ai] of wide, while, & tribe) versus “short long i” before unvoiced consonants (the [ʌi] of white, wife, & wipe)? When did ...
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Is the 'w' in 'cow' a vowel or a consonant? [duplicate]
Is the w in cow a vowel or a consonant?
Assuming it is considered a vowel, would it likewise be so in how?
I learned that the vowels are "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y."
If w can be a vowel, what ...
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What are the important differences between Canadian and American (USA) English?
English is not my first language; the little English I know is mostly from the USA.
I know some of the differences between British English (or just English?) and American English, and the same with ...
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How can I practice pronouncing “Coke” so it is not mistaken for another word?
I always fear my conversation sounds like this:
— What would you like to drink, sir?
— I will take some cock, thanks.
— ROFL.
Any tips on how to pronounce Coke so it is not mistaken for ...
