Symbols and their Names

We've talked about schwa and glottal stop, so you all know the symbols and their names. Some of the other symbols have names too. Here they are:

ə- schwa

ʔ- glottal stop

ɜ- epsilon (This is the name the Greek letter ɜ.)

θ- theta (This is the name the Greek letter θ.)

æ- ash (This was a letter in Old English, pre-Roman alphabet, for the ash tree, so it has retained this name in English. /æʃ/)

ð- /ɜð/ (This is from Old English and how it was pronounced in Old English. There is a song by the band Rush that mentions the name of this symbol. You can check it out here.)

ɑ- script a (This is because of how the letter a is handwritten- script- without the top mark.)

ʒ- /ɜʒ/ (This symbol is from the cursive form of z.)

ŋ- ing

If these characters have names in English, I have not been able to find them. Perhaps we should have a naming contest!

ɔ
∫
ʧ
dʒ
ʊ

We have a submission for ∫!!

Accents

Students often want to know the difference between American and British pronunciation. That's difficult question to answer. There are many different accents within the United States, and there are even more inside Great Britain. Add in the fact that there are multiple accents in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Scotland and the issue of difference between native speakers becomes quite large.

Still, here's a link to an actress who can speak with 21 different accents. It should give you a taste for the variety of accents in English.

Amy Walker's 21 Accents in Two Minutes

If you are interested in learning more about Amy Walker, you can click this link.

Different American Accents:
Here's a link to a collection of videos of different regional accents in the US.

Here's a link to a man talking about New York accents.

Here's a link to a Medford City Councilman speaking. He has an accent associated with Boston.

Different British Accents:
Here's a link to Peter Sellers doing many different accents.

Here's a link to Sean Ruttledge doing many different accents. I think you'll find several of them hard to understand.

Different Australian Accents:
Here's a link to Eugene talking about Australian accents.

Here's a link to Adam Hills talking about the Australian accent. (There is some use of profanity in this skit, so if you don't want to hear that, please skip this link.)

Different New Zealand Accents:
Here's a link to Stu talking about the New Zealand accent. (All things New Zealand are often referred to as Kiwi for the Kiwi bird that is indigenous to New Zealand.)

Here's a link to a news report on the New Zealand accent. (Pay attention at the very end when Lisa Glass says her name and the name of the news station- a speech bubble comes up and captions it for you.)

Here's a link to a New Zealander introducing himself to an American. She has difficulty understanding his name because the vowels are different between American English and New Zealand English. (This is a clip from a TV show called Flight of the Conchords.)



Good luck and enjoy the many different accents!!!

Sibilants

Sibilants are sounds that make a hiss or a buzz. They can be either voiced or voiceless.

The following consonants are voiceless sibilants in English:
/s/,/∫/, & /ʧ/

The following consonants are voiced sibilants in English:
/z/, /ʒ/, & /dʒ/

In addition to have correct pronunciation of these individual consonants, sibilants are important because they tell you how to pronounce the final s in English.

If a word ends in a sibilant, you need to pronounce the plural as /Iz/. This adds another syllable to the word. For example the word class is one syllable, but if you make it plural, classes, it is now two syllables: /klæs Iz/

Here are some examples for you.

dances- /dæns Iz/
washes- /wɑ∫ Iz/
languages- /læŋ gwɪdʒ Iz/
relaxes-/rə læks Iz/
James’- /dʒæmz Iz/

If you want more sibilant practice, you can check out these links.

Pronunciation Meg's first sibilant lesson
Pronunciation Meg's second sibilant lesson
Pronunciation Meg's third sibilant lesson

Aspirated Consonants

Some consonants are aspirated. If you hold your hand in front of your mouth as you say these sounds, you should feel a puff of air.

Aspirated consonants in English:

/k/. /t/, /p/, /s/, /ʧ/, & /∫/

An interesting site that talks about aspiration in English can be found here. This site also talks about aspiration in Samala (Samala is the language spoken by the Chumash people of California), but the part about English might be useful for you.

Voiceless Consonants

Voiceless consonants are consonants that do not cause a vibration of the vocal cords. If you place your hand on your throat, you will not feel any movement.

The voiceless consonants in English are:
/k/, /ʧ/, /s/, /f/, /h/, /p/, /∫/, /t/, & /θ/

Voiced Consonants

Voiced consonants are consonants that cause a vibration of the vocal cords. You can feel this vibration when you place your hand on your throat.

The voiced consonants in English are:
/b/, /d/, /g/, /dʒ/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /ʒ/, /v/, /r/,/ð/, /w/, /z/

Two voiced consonants that students have problems with are /l/ & /r/.

/l/ & /r/

Remember, as we have talked in class, your tongue is flat and touching your upper teeth for /l/.
For /r/ your tongue is curved and not touching the roof of your mouth. There's a good drawing of these two different sounds on Learn English Free Online here.

If you find /l/ and /r/ challenging to do correctly, check out this video. This is a clip from a popular TV show called Glee. As he sings the song Hello, you can really see how he places his tongue for /l/ and you can see how round his lips are for /r/. As you can't see his tongue for the r, you can understand the placement is different. (Pay attention to how he sings hello, alone, and door.)

English Spelling is Not Your Friend & Other Miscellany

As we've been discussing in class, you cannot rely on English spelling to tell you how to pronounce words in English. There are many incidents when we don't pronounce a letter in a word, like:

debt- there's no b
climb- there's no b
indict- there's no c
apartment- there are no t's
colonel- has only one l sound and no o's
camera- there are no e's
clothes- there is no th
favorite- there is no o

However, there are also many words that have the same spelling (or same spelling of the vowels) but different pronunciations, like:

bass- /beys/ or /bæs/
sow- /sow/ or /saw/
cough- /kɑf/
bough- /baw/

Homework practice:
Many students say they would like to hear a recording of the homework before they record it. You can find such a recording here. I've included both my husband and myself recording English Spelling is Not Your Friend and my recording of the names homework. Enjoy and good luck!!

English Spelling is Not Your Friend and Other Miscellany- Teresa


English Spelling is Not Your Friend and Other Miscellany- Eric


Names Practice- Teresa


I hope that helps!

Glottal Stop ʔ

Some examples of when I say /ʔ/ are:

written /rIʔIn/
important /Im pɔrʔIn/
cat /kæʔ/
Hawaii /hə wayʔiy/

As you can see, the glottal stop doesn't have to be a reduction of /t/.

If you want to learn more about glottal stops, you can check out this link. It's a linguistics link, so it might not be for everyone.

Betty Bought a Bit of Bitter Butter

Here is an example of some variation on the reduction of /t/. This is a famous tongue twister in English. When I say this tongue twister, I reduce most of the /t/ sounds to /d/, but there is a part of London where people reduce it to /ʔ/.

Betty bought a bit of butter,

But the bit of butter Betty bought was bitter.

So Betty bought a better bit of butter,

To make the bitter butter better

To hear the way I say this tongue twister, listen to this video.



To hear me saying it with all glottal stops, listen to this video.
(Please remember, I'm not from London- the part that says it with glottal stops or the part that doesn't!!)



Here are some links to others doing Betty Bought and you can listen and see how different native speakers say the t's in this tongue twister.

Hendrix
Lucas (a little boy)
Unknown (He's fast!)
Caleb & Colorado Snowboarding Clerk (This one starts out fast but slows down, so be patient as you watch.)

Consonants

The consonants /kɑnsənəns/ are:
/b/, /k/, /ʧ/, /s/, /d/, /f/, /g/, /h/, /dʒ/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /p/, /ʒ/, /∫/, /r/, /t/, /θ/, /ð/, /v/, /w/, /y/, /z/, & /ʔ/

Consonants, however, are written like this is English:
b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z

Consonants have restricted airflow.
Some consonants are voiced and some are voiceless.

Consonants are relatively set sounds in English; this means you won't hear many differences in how different native speakers say the same consonants. However, you will hear variation in when native speakers reduce /t/ to Ø, /d/, or /ʔ/.

We have several categories of consonants that we will talk about in this class. They are:

voiced
voiceless
aspirated
sibilants

Written Form:
There are several consonant sounds that have either no written form or no standard written form in English. These are:
/ʔ/, /ʒ/, & /dʒ/

If you want to delve into glottal stops a little more, click here.

There is no written distinction between /θ/ and /ð/. What this means is, when you see a word with the letter "th", you cannot know based on the spelling if the word is pronounced as a voiced or voiceless th.

The letter c can be pronounced /k/, /s/, or Ø
cake- /keyk/
cell- /sɜl/
practice- /præk tIs/
indict- /In dayt/

If you'd like a couple of fun little videos about consonants, you can check out these songs on consonants: here and here.

Homework practice:
Many students say they would like to hear a recording of the homework before they record it. You can find such a recording here. Enjoy and good luck!!

Consonants in Sentences- Teresa


I hope that helps you!