Monophthong Vowel Sounds (1-13)
In this lesson we are going to learn the 13 English monophthongs.
Monophthongs are made with a single position of the mouth (tongue, jaw, lips):
NOTE: Don’t worry if you cannot pronounce them correctly at this stage, the idea is to familiarise yourself with the range of sounds and symbols.
Let’s start with sounds 1 to 5, the FRONT VOWELS:
1. /iː/ BEAT
2. /ɪ/ BIT
3. /ɛ/ BET
4. /ɛː/ BEAR
5. /a/ BAT
You can see that the tongue position for these vowels is towards the front of mouth:
Also notice that as we move through the sounds, our jaw gradually opens.
Now we’ll pronounce the next group of vowel sounds:
7. /uː/ COOT
8. /ə/ QUARTER
9. /əː/ CURT
10. /ʌ/ CUT
11. /ɑː/ CART
These are CENTRE vowel sounds because as you can see, the tongue is flat:
Notice that /uː/ has rounded lips, all the other sounds we have encountered so far have unrounded lips.
Now we are going to try the final group of monophthongs, the BACK vowels:
11. /ʊ/ HOOK12. /ɒ/ HOCK
13. /ɔː/ HAWK
All of these back vowel sounds are made with rounded lips.
