Vowels

The most common description of vowels is that it is the sound in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from larynx to the lips. Vowels are pure tones because there is no noise. There are 7 short vowels and 5 long vowels.

How the vowels differ from each other?

1. Shape and position of the tongue - it is about the distance between upper surface of the tongue and the palate and secondly the part of the tongue between front and back which is raised highest.

2. Lip-rounding

a) Rounded = corners of the lips are brought towards each other - U

b) Spread = corners of lips move away from each other as for a smile -I

c) Neutral = lips are not rounded or spread - noise you make when you hesitate EER

Daniel Jones, the father of English phonetics, invented an abstract trapezoid model of tongue where he allocated cardinal vowels to certain positions to help his foreign students learn better pronunciation. That way iː is made by closing of oral cavity where the tongue is up and ɑː by opening of oral cavity and the tongue is down. There are also half closed/half open vowels. Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of language. A cardinal vowel is a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low.

Short vowels

Short vowels are short only abstractly, in reality some are shorter than others. If the word ends with fortis plosive, the previous vowel is shorter (bit x bid, bet x bed, bat x bad).

ɪ     pit, bit

e    pet, bed 

æ   bad, mad, sad 

ʌ    cut, but, mud  

ʊ   put, could, foot

 ɒ  pot, lot

Schwa may also be considered to be a short vowel.

Long vowels

Long vowels in transcription are marked by two dots following the vowel symbol. Short and long vowels do not only differ in length but also in quality due to different positions of tongue and lips.

iː    beat, mean, peace

ɜː   bird, purse

ɑː   card, half, pass

ɔː   board, horse

uː   food, soon, loose

Czech vowels

Czech language has 10 vowels, 5 short and 5 long, and they exist in pairs.

ɪ written as i or y

ʊ written as u

ɛ written as e or ě

a written as a

o written as o

iː written as í a ý

uː written as ú a ů

ɛː written as é

aː written as á

oː written as ó, exists only in interjections and in loanwords

It also has 3 diphthongs, namely aʊ, eʊ, and oʊ, but in Czech they are viewed as one phoneme rather than a combination of phonemes.