Pronunciation of vowel letters Kliszki Barbara Balogné Bérces, K., & Szentgyörgyi, S. (2006). The Pronunciation of English. Budapest: Bölcsész Konzorcium. János Kovács & Péter Siptár (2000): Újra angolra hangolva. Budapest. Tankönyvkiadó.

The relationship between the spelling and the pronunciation of English vowels Difficult because the principles are very different from those found in Hungarian In Hungarian each vowel letter represents one vowel sound and each vowel sound is represented by one vowel letter In English, however, each vowel sound may be represented by quite a few vowel letters or digraphs, and each vowel letter and digraph may stand for a few vowel sounds.

The regular sound values of single vowel letters

Plain-TenseBroken- Tense Plain-LaxBroad- Lax A same flame vain grave scare care ware bear sanity vanity gravity shadow star mar are Ha! E metre penal brief meet fear cheer hear pier metric penalty brevity met her were per Bert I=Y divine type crime write shire fire admire hire typical criminal division written bird firm irk first O mode go telephone pose bore four or orb modify gone positive probable bought force port short U student produce true do cure fuel insurance pure study double trust does purrs purse fur burr

Single vowel letter / ʊ / does not have a regular representation in spelling. has only three different pronunciations as its Broken-Tense and Broad-Lax pronunciations are phonetically identical. has six different pronunciations instead of the expected four since it is also affected by the rule of Yod-Dropping, in the tense values there is a yodless and yodful pronunciation.

Tense or Lax? Let’s practise! atom, baby, balance, suburb, basin, bother, cabin, British, city, civil, chemist, clever, colon, column, licence, item, crisis, decent, Dover, Edith, legend, motor, funeral, super, modern, punish, agent, Eden

Solutions Tense: A: agent, baby, basin E: decent, Eden, Edith I: crisis, item,licence O: colon, Dover, motor U: funeral, super Lax: A: atom, balance, cabin E: chemist, clever, legend I: British, city, civil O: bother, column, modern U: suburb, punish

Pronunciation values of vowel digraphs 1

Pronunciation values of vowel digraphs 2 Vowel digraphs regularly represent tense vowel sounds with one exception only, = the letters -, and - play the same role in the digraphs we can claim that there is a tendency to use and inside a word and and in word-final position

The yodful and yodless variants,,,, normally stand for the variants starting with /j/. All other representations normally stand for the variants without /j/, typically and in some irregular cases and. -pure, Europe, sewer -poor, moor, contour, tour However, in many environments the vowel letters and digraphs normally representing /ju:/ or / j ʊ ə/ are pronounced without /j/, a case often referred to as Yod-Dropping.

The graphic position of vowel letters V = vowel letter, C = consonant letter, S = stop, L = liquid, the hyphen indicates the position of the stressed vowel letter. Single vowel letters are in Free graphic position: if they are followed by another vowel letter, a consonant+vowel letter, two consonant letters representing a stop and a liquid sound plus a vowel letter, when they are word-final Covered graphic position: if they are followed by two consonant letters followed by a word-final consonant letter

Free Position Basic Rule Stressed single vowel letters in free position are normally pronounced as tense. Covered Position Rule Stressed single vowel letters in covered position are normally pronounced as lax In some cases the vowels are not pronounced according to these rules!

Thank you for your attention!