1.1 Phonemes

As mentioned before, a phoneme is the minimal unit of utterances produced in order to communicate a message using a language system, that is, sounds within a language. Although it is a minimal unit, a phoneme does not lack importance. A single phoneme may usually lack of meaning, but a single phoneme can be the difference in meaning for words. This is what happens with minimal pairs.

Stop and think

The following are two kinds of minimal pairs. Can you tell what the difference is?

sheep – ship
cat – fat

sheep – ship.
cat – fat.

You must certainly have noticed that the only difference in the first pair is the vowel sound, and that for the second pair it is a consonant sound. However, dealing with vowels and consonants in English is not always easy for non-native speakers. The written form of vowels and consonants in English does not always correspond to their ‘spoken version’. In general, there are 20 vowel sounds (8 diphthongs), and 24 consonant sounds, in contrast to the 5 vowels and 21 consonants that are used when writing.

Phonetic symbols chart

The following is a chart with the phonetic symbols, according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), that correspond to the vowel and consonant sounds. You’ll see both ‘ordinary letters’, as well as ‘invented symbols’ representing sounds not only for the English language (Fromkin et al., 2017), but that is the one we will focus on.

æ
ɑ:
aɪ
ʌ
aʊ
b
d
e
ɜ:
ə
eə
eɪ
f
g
h
ɪ
i:
ɪə
j
k
l
m
n
əʊ
ɒ
ɔɪ
ɔ:
p
r
s
t
u:
ʊ
ʊə
v
w
z
θ
tʃ
ʃ
dʒ
ŋ
ʒ
ð

This is not the only way to represent sounds; some bilingual dictionaries, and maybe even monolingual, may use different symbols to do it, trying to ‘simplify’ this orthographic representation. As a teacher, one needs to be careful with this, as it is impossible to know what our students will be using or have access to, and there is no way we could learn or teach all the different ‘options’ out there. The IPA symbols might seem impractical to teach or focus on in the general English language classroom. However, research suggests that “relying on ordinary spelling rather than the IPA is a short-sighted alternative which presents more problems than solutions” (Bryla-Cruz, 2022, p. 133). This is why for this course, the symbols used are those in the IPA, which is “the major phonetic alphabet in use” (Fromkin et al., 2017, p. 209).

LAS Activity 101. Phonetic symbols chart

Instructions

Select a category: vowel, diphthong or consonant. Then, click on the corresponding symbol for each word.

Vowels1 of 12

bead

ɔɪ

Diphthongs1 of 8

cake

Consonants1 of 24

As you can see, vowels can occur as a single sound or as a combination of sounds, such as diphthongs, which involve one vowel sound moving to another one. When the combination involves three vowel sounds, then we are talking about triphthongs. The following link provides some extra information about the phonemic chart and how it can be used to help with pronunciation: Teaching English Pronunciation Skills opens a new tab.

Single vowels sounds can be classified in short and long. Taking the words from the table in Activity 01, these are examples for short and long vowel sounds:

Short

Hit
Book
Left
About
Hat
Run
Dog

Long

Bead
Food
Shirt
Call
Far

Stop and think

How are long vowel sounds indicated in the phonetic symbols?

They are indicated with the symbol / : /

While vowels are all voiced sounds, consonants are classified in two different categories: voiced and unvoiced. The difference between voiced and unvoiced is that to produce a voiced sound you make the vocal cords in the larynx vibrate. There are nine voiced consonant sounds, from which eight have a very similar unvoiced pair. The consonant sound ‘h’ is voiced, but it does not have a similar unvoiced pair.

The following is an example of a pair of voiced and unvoiced consonants:

b / bin.
p / pin.

As ‘b’ is a voiced sound, you can hold the sound for while. On the contrary, unvoiced sounds like ‘p’ cannot be easily held, or not even held at all. Try holding the sound ‘b’ and then the sound ‘p’. Which one can you hold more easily?

There are still seven voiced consonant sounds with a similar unvoiced pair that have not been mentioned.

Stop and think

Instructions

From the following pairs of consonant sounds, which one is voiced and which one unvoiced?

cat

got

dʒ

judge

tʃ

church

fan

van

the

10.

think

11.

zoo

12.

sue

13.

she

14.

measure

The voiced-unvoiced component is not the only element to take into account for producing sounds. To produce different vowels, for example, which are all voiced sounds, you have to move your lips to modify the shape of your mouth, and place parts of your tongue (front, back, or centre) at different positions in your mouth (close, mid, or open, regarding the distance between your tongue and the roof of your mouth).

With regard to consonant sounds, there are two other aspects to consider: the manner and the place of articulation. Manner has to do with how much air passes through the vocal tract, and place refers to the movements of the articulators – lips and tongue – in relation to teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, and vocal cords. These are some of the parts of the body that constitute the organs of speech.

LAS Activity 102. Organs of speech

There are 8 organs of speech and 3 parts of the tongue that have been mentioned.

Instructions

1. Go back in the unit and take notes of them.

2. Look at the following image.

3. Complete their corresponding names in the following chart. There are answers that fit more than one space.

2. Upper

3. Upper

4. Lower

5. Lower

7. Hard

8. Soft

10.

Tongue

Very good! You are ready to continue.

Please, try to answer the exercise again.

Please, check the correct answers.

Scroll up and check the correct answers.

There are other parts of the body that are also organs of speech, and many other issues about phonemes, but this information is enough to get an idea of how ‘things’ work so that we can produce sounds.

For further concise information related to these issues and its application to language teaching , you can consult chapter one in Kelly’s (2000) How to Teach Pronunciation, which is a timeless classic.

Stop and think

Do you think phonemic symbols are useful? In what ways? How necessary is it for an English teacher to be familiar with phonemic transcription?

LAS Activity 103. Phonetic symbols and examples (PORTFOLIO)

Instructions

1. Download the following Word file (LAS Activity 103). Write your own examples for each of the phonetic symbols making sure to consult a source that uses the IPA to check your examples.

LAS Activity 103

2. Once you finish this activity, save it as PDF, name it LAS_103_LastName_FirstName, and upload it in Eminus in the corresponding section in ‘Actividades’.

This portfolio activity is 0.3 from your total portfolio points (2.0).