ENGLISH SOUND SYSTEM

Prepared by: Aimi, Eqa, Arifah

 Pronunciation
• Pronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is
spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If
someone is said to have "correct pronunciation," then it
refers to both within a particular dialect.
• A word can be spoken in different ways by various
individuals or groups, depending on many factors, such as:
– the area in which they grew up,
– the area in which they now live,
– if they have a speech or voice disorder their ethnic group,
– their social class, or
– their education.
Examples:
• accept (not except)
• Arctic (not Artic)
• ect cetera (not eck cetera)
• escape (not exscape)
• especially (not expecially)
• espresso (not expresso)
• February (not Febuary)
 Enunciation
• In phonetics, enunciation is the act of speaking.
Good enunciation is the act of speaking clearly and
concisely.
• One type of enunciation error stems from dropping
off the ends of words, especially "ing," "ed," "d,"
"p," or "t."
• For example : "Stopped" becomes "stop“.
• Other times, we might muddle the middle of
words by replacing sharper sounds (like "t'") with
softer sounds (like "d") because the softer sounds
require less muscle energy.
• For example : "Butter" might become "budder."
 Stress
• In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be
given to certain syllables in a word
• Stress is most dramatically realized on focussed or
accented words. For instance, consider the dialogue

"Is it brunch tomorrow?" "No, it's dinner tomorrow."

• In it, the stress-related acoustic differences between the

syllables of "tomorrow" would be small compared to the
differences between the syllables of "dinner", the
emphasized word. In these emphasized words, stressed
syllables such as "din" in "dinner" are louder and longer.
 Intonation

• Intonation is the "music" of a language, and is

perhaps the most important element of a
good accent.
 Consonant Sounds
What are consonant sounds?
• There are 44 sounds (19 + 25) that make up the sounds of
our English language.  
• 19 of the sounds we refer to as vowel sounds (because they
use the vowels a, e, i, o, u or make the sounds of our
vowels)
• 25 of the sounds we refer to as consonant sounds
• Each individual sound is sometimes referred to as a
grapheme or phoneme.  
• We use the letters of the alphabet to write sounds down.  
• There are over 70 ways to spell these sounds, which we
refer to as phonograms.
/b/ as in bib /d/  as in pond /f/  as in laugh /g/ as in pig

/h/  as in hop /j/ as in jam /k/ as in king /l/ as in hall

/m/ as in thumb /n/ as in pen /p/  as in pop /r/  as in car

/s/ as in sent /t/  as in tent /v/ as in hive /w/ as in window  

/y/ as in yell /z/ as in zip /ch/ as in chip /sh/ as in sheep

/zh/ as in Asia /th/ as in the /th/ as in thing /hw/ wheat

/ng/ as in ring 25 CONSONANT SOUNDS

Vowel Sounds
 Dipthongs
• A Diphthong is the union of two vowels in one
sound. When both vowels are sounded, the
diphthong is called PROPER, because then it is
really a DIPHTHONG, or double sound; that is, the
sounds of the vowels unite; as, oi in oil; ou in
sound.
• When only one of the vowels is sounded, the
diphthong is called IMPROPER, because then, as
one of the vowels is silent, it is not properly a
DIPHTHONG, though it takes that name; as, oa in
boat, ui in suit, where a and i are silent.
Dipthong          Approximate Eng. Sound  

ai/ay                   like I in time

  au                     like ow in now 
  ei/ey                  like a in date 
eu                        like eh + oo
oi/oy                 like oy in toy
    ia                       like ya in yacht
ie                       like ye in yet 
io                     like yo in yoga
ua                      like wa in watt
ue                      like wa in wait
  ui                       like wee in week
uo                    like uo in quota
 Triphtong

• A Triphthong is the union of three vowels in

one syllable; as, eau in beau, iew in view. The
triphthong is properly a union of letters, not
sounds.
 Triphtong   Approximate Eng. Sound

     iai                     like yi in yipe 

    iei                     like English word yea

   uai (uay)           like wi in wine

  uei (vey)           like wa in wade

Thank You