English pronunciation includes the usage of consonant and vowel sounds in 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, 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. 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. A consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture sufficient to cause audible turbulence, at one or more points along the vocal tract. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A schematic representation of auditory signaling Sound is vibration, as perceived by the sense of hearing. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ... Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is actually spoken now (or how it was actually spoken in the past), by any group of people. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ...

The number of phonemes in English

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]. John Christopher Wells, MA (Cantab), Ph. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ... Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language, sometimes defined as the educated spoken English of southeastern England. According to the Fowlers Modern English Usage (1965), the term is the Received Pronunciation. RP speech is non-rhotic, meaning that written r is pronounced only if... General American is a notional accent of American English based on speech patterns common in the Midwest of the United States and those used by many American network television broadcasters. ... The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) is a dictionary of American English published by Boston publisher Houghton-Mifflin, the first edition of which appeared in 1969. ... In phonetics, an r-colored vowel or rhotacized vowel is a vowel either with the tip or blade of the tongue turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex articulation) or with the the tip of the tongue down and the back of the...

The history of English pronunciation

See also History of the English language History of the English language Old English Main article: Old English language Around the 5th century and on, the land of England was invaded by Germanic tribes, primarily the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. ...

Around the late 14th century, English began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift, in which the high long vowels [iː] and [uː] in words like price and mouth became diphthongized, first to [əɪ] and [əʊ] (where they remain today in some environments in some accents such as Canadian English) and later to their modern values [aɪ] and [aʊ]. The other long vowels became higher: [eː] became [iː] (e.g. meet), [aː] became [eː] (later diphthongized to [eɪ], e.g. name), [oː] became [uː] (e.g. goose), and [ɔː] become [oː] (later diphthongized to [oʊ], e.g. bone). Later developments complicate the picture: whereas in Geoffrey Chaucer's time food, good, and blood all had the vowel [oː] and in William Shakespeare's time they all had the vowel [uː], in modern pronunciation good has shortened its vowel to [ʊ] and blood has shortened and lowered its vowel to [ʌ] 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 row. (13th century - 14th century - 15th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 14th century was that century which lasted from 1301 to 1400. ... The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language, generally accomplished in the 15th century, although evidence suggests it began as early as the 14th century. ... Canadian English is the form of English used in Canada, spoken as a first or second language by over 25 million Canadians (as recorded in the 2001 census [1]). Canadian English spelling is a mixture of American and British, but Canadian speech is much closer to American English, with some... Chaucer: Illustration from Cassells History of England, circa 1902 Geoffrey Chaucer (c. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... A rhyme is the association of words with similar sounds, a technique most often used in poetry. ... Taming of the Shrew by Augustus Egg The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare. ...

Some noteworthy phonological processes in English

Stress changes in many English words came about when the word was used as either a noun or a verb. 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. A noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...

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: Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

• The voiceless stops /p t k/ are aspirated at the beginnings of words (e.g. tomato) and at the beginnings of word-internal stressed syllables (e.g. potato).
• 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 [r] originally followed a tense vowel or diphthong (in Early Modern English) a schwa offglide was inserted, resulting in centering diphthongs like [iə] in beer [biər], [uə] in poor [puər], [aɪə] in fire [faɪər], [aʊə] in sour [saʊər], etc. This phenomenon is known as breaking. The subsequent history depends on whether the accent in question is rhotic or not: In nonrhotic accents like RP the postvocalic [r] was dropped, leaving [biə, puə, faɪə, saʊə] and the like (now usually transcribed [bɪə, pʊə] etc.). In rhotic accents like General American, on the other hand, the [ər] sequence was coalesced into a single sound, a nonsyllabic [ɚ], giving [biɚ, puɚ, faɪɚ, saʊɚ] and the like (now usually transcribed [bɪɹ, pʊɹ, faɪɹ, saʊɹ] etc.). 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 [ɫ], resulting in pronunciations like [piəɫ] for peel, [puəɫ] for pool, [peəɫ] for pail, and [poəɫ] for pole.

Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... This article discusses the unit of speech. ... Tenseness is a term used in phonology to describe a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Early modern English is a name for the modern English language the way it was used between around 1485 and 1650. ... In linguistics and phonology, schwa is the tonally-neutral, mid-central unrounded vowel sound, exactly in the middle of the vowel chart. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the letter r (equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ... Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language, sometimes defined as the educated spoken English of southeastern England. According to the Fowlers Modern English Usage (1965), the term is the Received Pronunciation. RP speech is non-rhotic, meaning that written r is pronounced only if... General American is a notional accent of American English based on speech patterns common in the Midwest of the United States and those used by many American network television broadcasters. ... Tenseness is a term used in phonology to describe a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

See also

• Happy tensing
• Caught-cot merger
• International Phonetic Alphabet for English
• IPA chart for English
• Ng coalescence
• Phonemic differentiation in English
• Pronunciation of English th
• Received Pronunciation
• Rhotic and non-rhotic accents

Happy tensing is a variation in English pronunciation that occurs in most accents of English, where words like happy are pronounced instead of older . ... The areas enclosed by the green line are those where most speakers have completely merged the vowels of cot and caught. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... This is a concise version of the International Phonetic Alphabet for English sounds. ... NG coalescence (or the singer-finger split) is the name given to a sound change by which word-final was deleted after ; this sound change happened around the end of the 16th century. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In English, the digraph <th> represents two phonemes, the voiced dental fricative /ð/ (as in this) and the voiceless dental fricative /θ/ (thing). ... Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language, sometimes defined as the educated spoken English of southeastern England. According to the Fowlers Modern English Usage (1965), the term is the Received Pronunciation. RP speech is non-rhotic, meaning that written r is pronounced only if... English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and the non-rhotic, depending on when the letter r (equivalent to Greek rho) is pronounced. ...

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.