Vowels In The English Language

Languages have different sound. Naturally, English language have different speech sounds and organizations of the sounds. “Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are produced, what their physical properties are, and how they are interpreted. On the other hand, phonology is about the organization of speech sounds in a language” (Cipollone, Keiser, & Vasishth, 1998).

In the English language, there are both consonants and vowels. From the point of view of phonemic, vowels can be divided into twenty different sounds and consonants can be divided into twenty four different sounds. “Vowels are the most sonorant, or intense, and the most audible sounds in speech” (Stewart, & vaillette, 2001). Consonants that surround vowels depend on the vowel for their audibility (Stewart, & Vaillette, 2001). Vowels are produced differently from that of consonants. Vowels are made when the vocal tract is completely open (Loos et al., 2003). The vocal tract above the glottis can change the vowel sounds. Vowels are produced by raising or lowering the body of the tongue, advancing or retracting the body of the tongue, rounding or not rounding the lips, and making these movements with a tense or a lax gesture (Stewart, & Vaillette, 2001). For example, when producing the vowel [i], we raise and advance the body of the tongue with a tense gesture. Whereas, the vowel [a] is made with the tongue lowered and a lax gesture.

Unlike vowels, consonants are made by a partial or complete