Week 4: Vowels

So, my focus this week was on the vowel production of Received Pronunciation. Learning to imitate vowels is the most difficult task for me to do since vowel production is more subtle in terms of place and manner of articulation. The strategies that I took for this purpose were listening to the archetype over and over again, watching some videos on British vowels and the vowel differences between Received Pronunciation and North American English (NAE), transcribing the archetype using IPA symbols, and then trying to pronounce the words in isolation at first and then in a complete sentence afterwards.

In order to learn more about the production of vowels in RP, I watched videos on BBC Learning English channel. The videos in this channel really helped me to differentiate almost similar vowels in RP. It also helped me to learn how to produce each vowel sound. From these videos, I learned how to pronounce long vowels /uː/ as in goose,/ɑː/ as in start, /ɔː/as in North, and /ʒː/ as in nurse; short vowels /e/as in dress, /æ/as in back; and also diphthongs. There are 8 diphthongs in RP, namely:

1. /ɪə/ as in near /nɪə/ and here /hɪə/
2. /ʊə/ as in tour /tʊə/ and cure /kjʊə/
3. /aɪ/ as in high /haɪ/ and try /traɪ/
4. /ɔɪ/ as in choice /tʃɔɪs/ and noise /nɔɪs/
5. /əʊ/as in know /nəʊ/ and goat /gəʊt/
6. /ea/ as in square /skwea/ and pair /pea/
7. /aʊ/ as in mouth /maʊθ/ and now /naʊ/
8. /eɪ/ as in face /feɪs/ and day /deɪ/

To get more understanding on the vowel production, I then watched another video on the differences between RP and NAE vowels. I found that it is easier for me to finally produce these vowel sounds when I know the differences in the production of these sounds in these two accent, RP and NAE. Here is the video:

  

After watching the videos, I transcribed the archetype as my guideline in recording myself this week. Here is the transcript of the archetype:

Afterwards, I tried to pronounce the words in isolation before finally pronouncing them in complete sentences. What I noticed from my archetype as well as from the videos, RP has more long vowels than NAE, and that long vowels are often used to compensate the /r/ deletion at the end of a word.
For example, the words nurse is pronounced as /nəɹs/ with a short schwa in NAE, but it is pronounced as /nɜːs/ in RP with the long vowel /ɜː/. It happens to all words ending with /r/ sound which is deleted in RP, for example in the words work, superb, North, tower, and there.

Another thing that I noticed is the difference in pronouncing the low back vowel as in the words job, and tower. In NAE these words are pronounced as /jɑb/ and /tɑwəɹ/; whereas in RP, these words are pronounced as /jɒb/ and /tɒwəː/. The low back vowel in RP has more lip rounding and less jaw drop compared to NAE.

Here is my recording after I tried to record several times:

Next week, I will work on the connected speech.