Phonemes for English vowels

Hey there! In this post we're going to see the phonemes for vowels.

In English there are 12 pure vowels:

      1. /i:/ (sea, seen, cheese, leave, receive, believe)

      This vowel is very similar to the spanish “i” but in english is more spread.

      2. /ɪ/ (sit, lip, tip, with, rich)

      This vowel is between the spanish “i” and “e”. More open and the lips are not spread.

      3. /e/ (set, bed, head, let, sent)

      Very similar to the spanish “e”.

      4. /æ/ (sat, cat, map, land, hand)

      More open than the “e”.

      5. /ʌ/ (cut, come, none, nothing, tongue)

      More closed than the spanish “a”.

      6. /a:/ (bath, pass, car, park, march)

      Long vowel, very open vowel, more than the spanish “a”.

      7. /ɒ/ (dog, top, lot, gone, what, wash, watch)

      Short “o”, very open. Almost open than the long “a”.

      8. /ɔ:/ (saw, jaw, door, more, horse)

      Longer than the /ɒ/. Closure of the mouth.

      9. /ʊ/ (put, could, would, book, good)

      More open than the spanish “u”. More similar than the open “u”.

     10. /u:/ (soon, moon, fool, do)

     Very similar to the spanish “u”.

     11. /ɜ:/ (girl, bird, turn, heard, word, work)

     The lips are neutrally open.

     12. /ә/ (famous, suspicious, mother, driver)

     If the syllable is unstressed, the word will have schwa.

Hope you find this useful and that it helps you with the study of phonetics! ;)