Tuesday 4 October 2011

How should my English sound? Lesson 2


How my English should sound? Lesson 2

Eye, my, mine – Introducing syllables.

We can divide a word in one or more syllables. For example 'mum' has only one syllable, 'mother' has two syllables and 'grandmother' has three. A syllable is a group of one or more sounds. The essential part of a syllable is the vowel (V). Some syllables are just one vowel sounds as in eye /aɪ/ and owe /əʊ/.
Syllables can have consonant sounds (C) before the V (CV), after the V (VC) and before and after the V (CVC). Here are some examples. All the words has only one syllable.

CV – go /gəʊ/; my /maɪ/; know /nəʊ/; weigh /weɪ/.
VC – if /ɪf/; egg /eg/; ice /aɪs/; eight /eɪt/.
CVC – ten /ten/; nose/nəʊz/; mouse /maʊs/; knife /naɪf/.

Remember! Letters are not the same as sounds. For example the consonant letters 'w' and 'y' are not consonant sounds if the come after the vowel in words like 'law' /lɔː/ and 'pay' /peɪ/. They are part of the vowel sound, that is, 'aw' = /ɔː/ and 'ay' = /eɪ/. It can also happen in some southern English accents with the letter 'r', for example: car /kɑː/, hair /heə/ and poor /pɔː/.

It is common to call syllable the number of parts in a written word. In phonetics, syllable is the number of times we need to emit a sound to pronounce a word. For example we can divide the word chocolate as cho-co-late, but when we say it, we only pronounce two syllables /ˈtʃɒk.lət/. The dot shows the syllabic division. Here are some other examples. Some words may be pronounced with fewer syllables than in writing: different /dɪf.ər.ənt ; comfortable /kʌm .fə.tə.bl/; interesting /ɪn.trəs.tɪŋ/; *secretary /ˈsek.rə.tri/. (* In American English this word is pronounced /ˈsek.rə.ter.i/).

The first syllable in these words has the same sounds, but in the opposite order: chicken /ˈtʃɪk.ɪn/; kitchen /ˈkɪtʃ.ən/. When we build a sentence with similar words like these, it may be difficult to say. It is called 'tongue-twisters' like in: Richard checked the chicken in the kitchen.

Now it's time to exercise:

  1. Organise the words according to the groups below:

    aunt, cook, dad, doctor, grandfather, officer, passenger, sister, teacher, uncle

    1 syllable:
    2 syllables:
    3 syllables:

  2. The spelling changes if you change the order of sounds in these one-syllable words from CV to VC.
    a) /lɔː/ /ɔːl/
    b) /deɪ/ /eɪd/
    c) /n
    əʊ/ /əʊn/
    d) /peɪ/ /eɪp/
    e) /tiː/ /iːt/
    f) /meɪ/ /eɪm/

Bibliography: HANKOK, Mark.
English Pronunciation in Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

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