Vowel Chart: Why Do You Need It?

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Everyone aspiring to learn a different language should consider learning the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It helps you learn a language through the correct pronunciation of the words. There are also several materials available to help with understanding the use of IPA in English. For example, a vowel chart or color vowel chart.

What is the IPA Vowel Chart?

The IPA vowel chart shows an alphabet system that was developed by the International Phonetic Association, borrowing symbols from Latin. It is a standard way of representing the sounds spoken in any language. The International Phonetic Association is always providing a new, slightly altered chart every time sounds and phonetic pronunciations change in a given language.
The IPA chart varies from one language to another, depending on the specific language’s sounds. For instance, the English chart is a quadrilateral while the Latin IPA chart (and most of the other languages) have a triangular shape. This shape is entirely dependent on the sounds of the language and the position of the tongue in the mouth during pronunciation.

What is the English Vowel Chart?

This is simply an IPA chart for English. It is trapezoidal, following the specific positions of the tongue when you utter the sounds.
Why is the vowel chart IPA important? Well, consider the following words:

  • father
  • ball
  • maze

The letter “a” in each one of those words sounds completely different. Therefore, learning to speak English (or any other language) correctly by simply looking at the words would be very difficult. You will end up with the wrong pronunciation.
When you use the vowel chart, however, each sound gets a unique symbol and position that shows whether it is a short or long vowel (more on that later) as well as the correct position of the tongue and pronunciation, among other factors.
Now, before we go into the details, here are some tips for remembering the IPA vowel chart.

How to remember IPA chart more easily

  • Learn the Symbols and their position on the chart at the same time.
  • speak out the sounds when learning the chart.
  • try to relate each symbol to a common, distinctive word(s) that you’ll remember all the time.
  • Use the color vowel chart (discussed below)
  • try forming sentences with many unique sounding words.

What are the 15 English vowel sounds?

So, what does the vowel chart represent? In English, the vowel chart depicts 15 vowel sounds represented by various symbols. Here are the sounds and examples of their occurrence in various common words:

  • i – “we”, “ease”
  • u – “use”, “would”
  • I – “if” “his”
  • ʊ – “look” “would”
  • ɛ – “said” “then”
  • ə – “about” “said”
  • ɜ – “burn”,
  • o – “glow” “know”
  • ɔ – “lawn” “aught”
  • æ – “cat”, “act”
  • ʌ – “fun”, “must”
  • a – “car”
  • e – “hey”
  • ɑ – “arm”, hot (British RP)
  • ɒ – “hop”, “hot (American GenAm)

The English vowel sounds can further be categorized as long, short, or other, giving rise to the following groups:

Long Vowels

These are vowels that sound just like the letter name itself. They include:

  • Long “a”: cake
  • Long “e”: keep
  • Long “i”: bike
  • Long “o”: home
  • long “u: cute

Short Vowels

These are the most commonly occurring sounds in English words that have a single vowel.

  • short “a: cat
  • short “e: bed
  • short “i: sit
  • short “o: top
  • short “u: sun

Other Vowels

This category includes all the other vowels you will come across that do not fall under either short or long vowels.

  • other “u”: put
  • “oo” sound: soon
  • “aw” sound: dog
  • “oi” sound: join
  • “ow” sound: down

How to articulate IPA vowel sounds

The IPA vowels chart’s shape, in this case trapezoidal, tries to replicate the position of the tongue when you are articulating that sound. This position is determined by two main variables: height and backness. But a comprehensive chart shows also a third and fourth factor – close and roundedness – which indicate how closed/open the mouth should be as well as the roundedness of the lips.

Vowel Height

In practice, the height of a vowel is associated with the vertical position of the tongue from the palate. High vowels, also referred to as close vowels, are those whose pronunciation involves the tongue high in the mouth, close to the palette. For example, the “i” and “u” sound. If you speak them out, you will notice that these English vowel sounds are also characterized by the mouth being more closed. high vowels come at the top of the vowel chart.
On the other hand, low vowels, also called open vowels, are characterized by having your tongue low in the mouth and the jaw more open when you say them. You should notice your mouth being more open when pronouncing a low vowel. They fall at the bottom of the chart.

Vowel Backness

Vowel backness refers to the correct position of your tongue in relation to the back of the mouth when you are articulating the vowel. In a front vowel sound – like “i” and “e”, the position of the tongue in the mouth is usually forward, far away from the back. You will notice that every front vowel is indicated on the left side of the vowel chart.
With a back vowel sound, however, the tongue’s position is consistently near the back of the mouth. For instance, the vowel sounds “u” and “o”.

What is the color vowel chart?

The Color Vowel® Chart is another visual tool that aims to enhance your ability to remember and tune your tongue to the correct pronunciation. It is a collection of interactive brain-based strategies that help a new English learner discover, practice, and master the way sounds are pronounced in English.
The color vowel chart was developed in 1999 by Karen Taylor and Shirley Thompson. When you click on a specific tab on the chart, you can hear the pronunciation audio, which helps with your practice. You can keep on trying to replicate the audio on the color vowel chart until you feel confident enough with your pronunciation.
When combined with the IPA vowels chart, the color vowel chart becomes a very powerful tool for teaching and learning spoken English.

Other elements of the International Phonetic Alphabet

As you learn more and more about IPA and the English Language, you begin to realize that phonetics is a very deep topic. You don’t have to know everything. Trying as much as possible is good, though. Moreover, you can always learn about these rules and symbols online and a vowel chart or color vowel chart as you come across them in text.
That being said, here are some more features of IPA chart vowels that you could use when learning or teaching an international language.

Word Stress

When going through vowel ipa material, you will notice the symbols (‘) placed on specific sounds middle. This is used to represent a stressed word.
For example, the word present can be stressed differently to make it a verb or a noun. The verb is pronunced as /prɪˈzɛnt/ while the noun goes like /ˈprɛzənt/. You will learn more about that under the consonants.

Diacritics

This is an extra symbol that you’ll often come across on a letter- like “é” and “ã”. It mostly occurs on words that have been borrowed from other international languages and is used to indicate a variation in pronunciation. There are 52 diacritics in the IPA.

Broad and narrow transcriptions

Another common representation you may come across when using IPA is square brackets instead of slashes. Narrow transcription is the most popular. This is when pronunciation is written in between slashes. It gives the general pronunciation of the word. For example, the broad transcription of “paper” would be /peɪpə/.
On the other hand, when written in narrow transcription, phonetics give as much detail as possible concerning the native way of articulating a word. For instance, the same word, “paper” would be represented as [ˈpʰeɪpə] in narrow transcription.

More IPA vowel sounds and word examples

Here are examples to help you practice your English IPA vowel sounds. Keep the phonetic symbols explained above in mind (as well as open and close, height, and long/short ipa vowel sounds). Say them out loud to benefit the most from your practice.
All of the English words in brackets below have the correct pronunciation to match the corresponding IPA vowel sound.

  1. e: (went, letter, intend, send, )
  2. æ: (have, nap, flat, cat, hand)
  3. ʌ: (come, fun, money, love, London, one)
  4. ʊ: (put, should, look, book, cook)
  5. ɒ: (sausage, top, squat, rob, watch)
  6. ə: (again, mother, alive)
  7. i: (team, need, beat)
  8. ɜ: (heard, turn, nurse, third)
  9. u: (few, lose, fruit, chew, boot)
  10. ɑ: (hard, car, bath, fast)
  11. ɔ: (talk, jaw, law, bored, yawn)
  12. I: (Pit, hit, sitting)
  13. ɛ: (then, said, bet, head)
  14. o: (know, glow)
  15. U: (boot, gloomy, lose, chew, fruit)

Final word

The key to learning how to speak any international language (such as English) properly is, to begin with pronouncing the words correctly. A vowel chart shows you how to do exactly that, which is why you should consider learning how to use one. The symbols are many, but again, you don’t have to know them all at once. However, you must make good use of all the resources at your disposal, including color vowel charts and online quizzes.

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