'English phonology' is the study of the
phonology (i.e. the sound system) of the
English language. Like all languages, spoken English has wide variation in its
pronunciation both
diachronically and
synchronically from
dialect to dialect. This variation is especially salient in English, because the language is spoken over such a wide territory, being the predominant language in
Australia,
Canada, the
Commonwealth Caribbean,
Ireland,
New Zealand, the
United Kingdom and the
United States in addition to being spoken as a first or second language by people in countries on every continent, notably
South Africa and
India. With no conclusive, internationally recognized standards for English, even the English spoken in different countries can occasionally prove to be an impediment to understanding what is said, although for the most part the different regional accents of English are mutually intelligible.
Phonemes
''See
IPA chart for English for concise and
International Phonetic Alphabet for English for more detailed charts of the English phonemes. ''
Although there are many dialects of English, the following are usually used as prestige or standard accents:
Received Pronunciation for the United Kingdom,
General American for the United States and
General Australian for Australia.
The number of speech sounds in English varies from dialect to dialect, and any actual tally depends greatly on the interpretation of the researcher doing the counting. The ''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary'' by
John C. Wells, for example, using symbols of the
International Phonetic Alphabet, denotes 24 consonants and 23 vowels used in
Received Pronunciation, plus two additional consonants and four additional vowels used in foreign words only. For
General American it provides for 25 consonants and 19 vowels, with one additional consonant and three additional vowels for foreign words. The ''
American Heritage Dictionary'', on the other hand, suggests 25 consonants and 18 vowels (including
r-colored vowels) for American English, plus one consonant and five vowels for non-English terms
[1].
A chart showing the positions of the
stressed
monophthongs of one accent of English, namely southern
California English (based on
[1]), is shown below. Notable is the absence of as in ''thought'' and as in ''lot'', which have merged with as in ''father'' in this accent through the
father-bother and
cot-caught mergers.
æ-tensing
'
æ-tensing' is a phenomenon found in many varieties of
American English by which the vowel has a longer, higher, and usually
diphthongal pronunciation in some environments, usually to something like . In some American accents, and are apparently now separate phonemes.
Bad-lad split
The '
bad-lad split' refers to the situation in some varieties of southern
English English and
Australian English, where a long phoneme in words like ''bad'' contrasts with a short in words like ''lad''.
Cot-caught merger
The '
cot-caught' merger is a sound change by which the vowel of words like ''cot'', ''rock'', and ''doll'' is pronounced the same as the vowel of words like ''caught'', ''talk'', and ''tall''. This merger is widespread in
North American English, being found in approximately 40% of
American speakers and virtually all
Canadian speakers.
Phonological processes
Some noteworthy phonological processes in English:
Initial-stress-derived nouns mean that stress changes in many English words came about between
noun and
verb senses of a word. For example, a ''rebel'' [] (stress on the first syllable) is inclined to ''rebel'' [] (stress on the second syllable) against the powers that be. The number of words using this pattern as opposed to only stressing the second syllable in all circumstances doubled every century or so, now including the English words ''object'', ''convict'', and ''addict''.
Although
regional variation is very great across English dialects, some generalizations can be made about pronunciation in all (or at least the vast majority) of English accents:
★ The
voiceless stops are
aspirated at the beginnings of words (for example '''t'omato'') and at the beginnings of word-internal
stressed syllables (for example ''po't'ato'').
★ A distinction is made between
tense and lax vowels in pairs like ''beet''/''bit'' and ''bait''/''bet'', although the exact
phonetic implementation of the distinction varies from accent to accent.
★ Wherever
originally followed a tense vowel or diphthong (in
Early Modern English) a
schwa offglide was inserted, resulting in centering
diphthongs like in ''beer'' , in ''poor'' , in ''fire'' , in ''sour'' , and so forth. This phenomenon is known as ''breaking''. The subsequent history depends on whether the accent in question is
rhotic or not: In non-rhotic accents like
RP the postvocalic was dropped, leaving and the like (now usually transcribed and so forth). In rhotic accents like
General American, on the other hand, the sequence was coalesced into a single sound, a
non-syllabic , giving and the like (now usually transcribed and so forth). As a result, originally monosyllabic words like those just mentioned came to rhyme with originally disyllabic words like ''seer'', ''doer'', ''higher'', ''power''.
★ In many (but not all) accents of English, a similar breaking happens to
tense vowels before
, resulting in pronunciations like for ''peel'', for ''pool'', for ''pail'', and for ''pole''.
Phonotactics
Note: This information applies to
RP. Other than variations in the possible onsets with or without final , and the presence or absence of the phoneme , it also applies to the other main varieties of English. only occurs syllable-initial and does not occur in clusters.
Note: In the following, is used to denote the consonant variously realised as
,
or
.
Syllable structure
The
syllable structure in English is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C), with a maximal example being ''strengths'' (/strɛŋkθs/, although it can be pronounced /strɛŋθs/).
Onset
There is an on-going sound change (
yod-dropping) by which as the final consonant in a
cluster is being lost. In RP, words with and can usually be pronounced with or without this sound, e.g., or . For some speakers of English, including some British speakers, the sound change is more advanced and so, for example, in
General American is also not present after , and . In
Welsh English it can occur in more combinations, for example in .
The following can occur as the
onset:
| All single consonant phonemes except | |
Plosive plus approximant other than :
, , , ,
, , , , , ,
, , , | play, blood, clean, glove, prize, bring, tree, drink, crowd, green, twin, dwarf, language, quick |
Voiceless fricative plus approximant other than :
, ,
, , ,
, | floor, sleep, friend, three, shrimp, swing, thwart |
Consonant plus :
, , , , , ,
, , , , ,
, , , | pure, beautiful, tube, during, cute, argue, music, new, few, view, enthusiastic, suit, Zeus, huge, lurid |
/s/ plus voiceless plosive:
, , | speak, stop, skill |
/s/ plus nasal:
, | smile, snow |
/s/ plus voiceless fricative:
| sphere |
/s/ plus voiceless plosive plus approximant:
, , , ,
, ,
, , , | split, spring, spew, smew, street, student, sclerosis, scream, square, skewer |
Note: A few onsets occur infrequently making it uncertain whether they are native pronunciations or merely non-assimilated borrowings, e.g. (''pueblo''), (''bwana''), (''svelt''), (''Sri Lanka''), (''oeuvre''), (''schwa''), and (''sphragistics'').
Nucleus
The following can occur as the
nucleus:
★ All vowel sounds
★ , and in certain situations (see below under
word-level rules)
★ in
rhotic varieties of English (eg
General American) in certain situations (see below under
word-level rules)
Coda
Most, and in theory all, of the following except those which end with , , , , or can be extended with or representing the
morpheme -s/z-. Similarly most, and in theory all, of the following except those which end with or can be extended with or representing the morpheme -t/d-.
The following can occur as the
coda:
| The single consonant phonemes except , , and, in non-rhotic varieties, | |
| Lateral approximant + plosive: , , , , | help, bulb, belt, hold, milk |
| In rhotic varieties, /r/ + plosive: , , , , , | harp, orb, fort, beard, mark, morgue |
| Lateral approximant + fricative or affricate: , , , , , , | golf, solve, wealth, else, Welsh, belch, indulge |
| In rhotic varieties, /r/ + fricative or affricate: , , , , , | dwarf, carve, north, force, marsh, arch, large |
| Lateral approximant + nasal: , | film, kiln |
| In rhotic varieties, /r/ + nasal or lateral: , , | arm, born, snarl |
| Nasal + homorganic plosive: , , , | jump, tent, end, pink |
| Nasal + fricative or affricate: , in non-rhotic varieties, , , , , , in some varieties | triumph, warmth, month, prince, bronze, lunch, lounge, length |
| Voiceless fricative + voiceless plosive: , , , | left, crisp, lost, ask |
| Two voiceless fricatives: | fifth |
| Two voiceless plosives: , | opt, act |
| Plosive + voiceless fricative: , , , , , , | depth, lapse, eighth, klutz, width, adze, box |
| Lateral approximant + two consonants: , , , , , | sculpt, twelfth, waltz, whilst, mulct, calx |
| In rhotic varieties, /r/ + two consonants: , , , , , | warmth, excerpt, corpse, quartz, horst, infarct |
| Nasal + homorganic plosive + plosive or fricative: , , , , , in some varieties | prompt, glimpse, thousandth, distinct, jinx, length |
| Three obstruents: , | sixth, next |
Note: For some speakers, a fricative before is elided so that these never appear phonetically: becomes , becomes , becomes .
Syllable-level rules
★ Both the onset and the coda are optional
★ at the end of an onset (, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) must be followed by or
★ Long vowels and diphthongs are not followed by
★ is rare in syllable-initial position
★ Stop + /w/ before /uː, ʊ, ʌ, aʊ/ are excluded
[2]
★ Sequences of /s/ + C
1 + V̆ + C
1, where C
1 is the same consonant in both the onset cluster and the coda and V̆ is a short vowel, are virtually nonexistent
Word-level rules
★ does not occur in stressed syllables
★ does not occur in word-initial position in native English words although it can occur syllable-initial, eg
★ does not occur in word-initial position except in the archaic word ''thew''
★ , , and, in
rhotic varieties, can be the syllable nucleus (ie a
syllabic consonant) in an unstressed syllable following another consonant, especially , , or
★ Certain short vowel sounds, called
checked vowels, cannot occur without a coda in a single syllable word. In
RP, the following short vowel sounds are checked: , , and .
History of English pronunciation
''See also
Phonological history of the English language''
Around the late
14th century, English began to undergo the
Great Vowel Shift, in which
★ the high long vowels and in words like ''price'' and ''mouth'' became diphthongized, first to and (where they remain today in some environments in some accents such as
Canadian English) and later to their modern values and . This is not unique to English, as this also happened in
Dutch (first shift only) and
German (both shifts).
The other long vowels became higher:
★ became (for example ''meet''),
★ became (later diphthongized to , for example ''name''),
★ became (for example ''goose''), and
★ become (later diphthongized to , for example ''bone'').
Later developments complicate the picture: whereas in
Geoffrey Chaucer's time ''food'', ''good'', and ''blood'' all had the vowel and in
William Shakespeare's time they all had the vowel , in modern pronunciation ''good'' has shortened its vowel to and ''blood'' has shortened and lowered its vowel to in most accents. In Shakespeare's day (late
16th-early
17th century), many
rhymes were possible that no longer hold today. For example, in his play ''
The Taming of the Shrew'', ''shrew'' rhymed with ''woe''.
[2]
See also
★
Phonological history of the English language
★
Phonological history of English vowels
★
Phonological history of English consonants
★
Received Pronunciation
★
General American
★
Accent reduction
★
Australian English phonology
★
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
★
Pronunciation of English th
★
English spelling
★
★
English pronunciation of Greek letters
★
Vocalic r
References
1. Ladefoged, Peter (1999). "American English." In ''Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'', 41–44, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-63751-1.
2. Clements, G. N.; & Keyser, S. (1983). ''CV phonology: A generative theory of the syllable''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
★ Roach, Peter (2000). ''English Phonetics and Phonology.'' Cambridge: CUP.
External links
★
The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet (www.antimoon.com). Includes mp3 audio samples of all the English phonemes.
★
The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité. A classic English poem containing about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation.
★
British and American English pronunciation courses
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