American English Vowels.

Vowels are generally classified in terms of articulation (e.i., the position and shape of major articulators, such as tongue, lips, velum, etc.) and/or their acoustic properties (usually by means of the so-called frequency formats f1 and f2). For most learning purposes, however, articulatory description seems most useful. Such description is based on the position of the tongue and the degree of lip rounding which accompanies the production of vowels. For example, vowel sounds which are made by raising the back of the tongue higher than the front of the tongue are called back vowels, and vowels made by raising the front of the tongue higher than the back of the tongue are called front vowels. Most typically, back vowels will involve a greater degree of lip rounding than front vowels. Similarly, vowels which are articulated with the tongue raised closer to the roof of the mouth will be referred to as high vowels, and those made with the tongue further apart from the roof of the mouth are called low vowels. While making low vowels sounds, the mouth is usually open more open than in the case high vowels. The following chart illustrates this classification.

It must be noted that both the position as well as the number of vowels may differ slightly from dialect to dialect. For most learners, those differences are perhaps negligible.

Examples of words and transcriptions.

The chart uses so-called IPA phonetic symbols. Most learners may not be familiar with those symbols, nor will it be easy to display IPA notation in a web browser. For the sake of simplicity, plain text-based (ASCII) notation will be used in this guide. The following table illustrates the use of phonetic symbols with examples.

Model Vowels

Click "PLAY" to hear the sounds.

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