In Englishphonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that must be followed by a consonant in a stressedsyllable, while free vowels are those that may stand in a stressed open syllable with no following consonant. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word ÏÏνή, phone = sound/voice) is the study of sounds (voice). ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. ... 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. ... 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. ... Italic text:This article discusses the unit of speech. ...
In General American, the checked vowels are: 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. ...
/ɪ/ as in bit
/ɛ/ as in bet
/æ/ as in bat
/ʊ/ as in put
/ʌ/ as in but
The free vowels are:
/i/ as in bee
/e/ (also transcribed /eɪ/) as in bay
/u/ as in boo
/o/ (also transcribed /oʊ/) as in bow (a tool for shooting arrows; a tool for playing a stringed instrument)
/ɔ/ as in paw
/ɑ/ as in bra
/ɝ/ as in burr
/aɪ/ as in buy
/aʊ/ as in bow (to bend at the waist; a part of a ship)
/ɔɪ/ as in boy
The schwa/ə/ and rhotacized schwa /ɚ/ not usually are considered either free or checked, since they cannot stand in stressed syllables at all. Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... Spectrogram of a regular vowel and its rhotacized counterpart. ...
The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel respectively, but many linguists prefer to use the terms checked and free as there is no clearcut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness, and since by most attempted definitions of tenseness /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ are considered lax, even though they behave in American English as free vowels. Tenseness is a term used in phonology to describe a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. ... American English (AmE) is the form of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. ...
Its vowel height is open-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel and a mid vowel.
Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.