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Instructor: Ms. Mariella R. Mallari

School Year/Term:2019-2020/2nd Semester

Subject Code: Eng 13
Subject Title: Speech and Oral Communication
Date Covered: April 17, 2020 (3 hours)
Topic/s: The Diphthongs
Reference/s: http://www.englishpronunciationmadrid.com/vowels/vowels/diphthongs/

http://www.englishpronunciationmadrid.com/vowels/vowels/smoothing/
http://www.englishpronunciationmadrid.com/vowels/vowels/vowel-shortening/

Information Sheets
The Diphthongs
Learning Objectives:

After reading this INFORMATION SHEETS, learners shall be able to…

 Identify diphthongs and know how to use it properly and developed the skills of the learner in
pronouncing words.

Discussion:
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Diphthongs

A diphthong is a glide from one vowel sound to another within a single syllable (e.g., the phoneme /aɪ/
in the words I, my  or try). This is different from a monophtong, where there is just one vowel sound
(/æ/ in man or sand).

Unlike Spanish, in English diphthongs are normally considered just one phoneme, not the combination
of two. Here are the eight English diphthongs:

ɪə ʊə eɪ əʊ ɔɪ eə aɪ aʊ

here, endure, make, go, boy, there, time, how,

near, tour, brain, low, toy, air, type, loud,

deer, pure, play, bode, noise, share, my, mouse

weird poor eight, boat,  voice rare, lie, about

  great, toe, pear, buy, cow,

they so, bear eye, allow

 shoulder high,  

height,

Table 1
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Diphthongs are one of the greatest sources of mispronunciation for Spanish speakers. The main
difficulty is that English letters can be pronounced in several ways, so sometimes it’s difficult to know
which is the correct one. An i  can be said as /ɪ/ or /aɪ/, an o as /ɒ/ or /əʊ/, etc. We must also remember
that vowels are often pronounced /ə/ when they are unstressed. This uncertainty leads to very common
mistakes. Let’s see some examples of words which are often mispronounced by Spanish speakers.

                                  Right                                                          Wrong

since                     /sɪns/                                                                 /sains/*

abroad                    /əˈbrɔːd/                                                              /aˈbroud/*

afraid                     /əˈfreɪd/                                                                /aˈfred/*

said                          /sed/                                                                   /seɪd/*

both                         /bəʊθ/                                                                  /boθ/*

old                             /əʊld/                                                                 /old/*

comfortable        /ˈkʌmftəbl/                                                          /komforˈteibol/*

Ian                            /ˈiːən/                                                                /ˈaian/*

image                       /ˈɪmɪʤ/                                                                 /iˈmeiʤ/*

famous                   /ˈfeɪməs/                                                               /ˈfamous/*

 
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However, the glides included in Table 1 don’t exhaust the subject of diphthongs, not in the sense we,
Spanish speakers, understand them in any case (there seem to be differences in the criteria we use to
classify very similar phenomena).

There are English words such as music /ˈmjuːzɪk/, new /nju:/, one /wʌn/, win /wɪn/ or when  /wen/ that

we would immediately think of as diphthongs. But if they are not diphthongs in English, what are they,
then? These words include sounds which are called semiconsonants or even semivowels sometimes (/j/
and /w/, explained here and here), which are very similar to vowels but not exactly the same, and that’s
why they are left out of the table. However, to have the whole picture in mind, it is advisable to be
aware of their existence and to know how they are considered in English.

 And here are a couple of examples of diphthongs pronounced by native speakers:

 Well, I thought I’d given loads away. I think I’m full of sort of heartfelt personal details about my
joys and pains (David Mitchell, BBC4)

 There’re jokes about the aging process (John Wilson, BBC4).

There are no absolute rules that will always allow us to know if a vowel is pronounced as a
monophthong or as a diphthong, but fortunately we can use a couple of very useful guidelines. Let’s see
them.

 1. Double consonants. When a vowel is followed by a double consonant, it is always pronounced as a

monophthong (most of the times, a short one).

 apple            bottle            daddy             buzz            class              dinner   (but   diner)

I only know one exception to this rule, the word bass (lowest tone in music), which is
pronounced /beɪs/. When the word bass means a type of fish, it is pronounced /bæs/ instead.

2. The silent magic e. Have a look at the following comparison.

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 mad           made               fat            fate                          hat              hate

 met            mete               pet            Pete                        gen              gene

 sit                site             fin            fine                           Tim            time

 cloth          clothe             cod          code                         not             note

 cut               cute             us              use                          cub             cube

 An old English saying goes “silent final e makes the vowel say its name”. As you can observe,
the addition of a silent e  to many words not only changes its meaning but the pronunciation of the
previous vowel as well. This stops being a short vowel and it’s pronounced with its alphabet name:
a /eɪ/ (made); e /i:/ (gene); i /aɪ/ (time); o /əʊ/ (note); u, /ju:/ (cute). The new vowel is a diphthong in all
the cases but the e, which is pronounced as a long /i:/.

The silent e, which is often called the magic e, cannot be taken as a rule, because there are plenty of
exceptions (some of them as common as love or have), but it does give a clue as to the pronunciation of
the vowel in a great number of cases.

Now, if you want to further refine your pronunciation of diphthongs, here are five interesting points to
take into account.

Five points about diphthongs

1. Length. Diphthongs last more or less the same as a long vowel (/ɑː/, /ɔː/, etc.).
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2. Unequal vowels. The first element is longer and more stressed (the /a/ part of the diphthong /aɪ/
in time, for instance). The second element can be considerably weakened.

3. Not like in Spanish. When you find the sounds /a/ or /ɔ/ as part of the diphthong, you can pronounce
them as in Spanish because they sound very similar. You can do this with the /a/ in time or the /ɔ/
in joy, but the other vowels are quite different. So it is advisable to check how these sounds (/e/, /ɪ/, /ə/
and /ʊ/) are pronounced in the corresponding sections.

4. Watch these two! I recommend to be particularly careful with two diphthongs, /əʊ/ and /eə/.

5. Pre-fortis clipping. Diphthongs are shortened by following voiceless consonants in the same way
pure vowels are (this process is known as pre-fortis clipping). You can observe this difference in length
in the recordings included in table 3. Boat is shorter than bode, make than brain and type than time.
This is because /t/, /k/ and /p/ are voiceless whereas /d/, /n/ and /m/ are voiced.

 Triphthongs and smoothing

We now turn to a very interesting phenomenon which is somewhat disconcerting for Spanish speakers:
the pronunciation of English triphthongs. Being aware of it will help you not only to sound more
natural and fluent but also to understand what native speakers say better.

English has five triphthongs, which are formed by the diphtongs ending in /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ + the sound /ə/.
Let’s see some examples:

/aʊ/ + /ə/ =  [aʊə]                         hour 

/aɪ/ + /ə/ =  [aɪə]                           fire 

/eɪ/ + /ə/ =  [eɪə]                           player 

/əʊ/ + /ə/ =  [əʊə]                        mower

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/ɔɪ/ + /ə/ =  [ɔɪə]                           employer  

As you can see, triphthongs have three vowel sounds in a row. However, they are not always fully
pronounced since very often the second element (that is, the [ɪ] or [ʊ] in the middle) is  considerably
weakened or left out altogether. This process is called smoothing and it is very typical of British RP (it
occurs less frequently in General American).

The smoothing  phenomenon particularly affects the diphthongs /aʊ/, /aɪ/ and /eɪ/, which become [aə],
[aə] and [eə]. So, the result is as follows:

Full version                                                             Smoothed version

 hour  /aʊə/                                                           hour /aə/

 fire   /faɪə/                                                            fire   /faə/

 player  /pleɪə/                                                     player  /pleə/

The triphthong [aʊə] is often pronounced just as /ɑː/, especially in some words like the possessive our.
Notice how clearly this happens in the following examples:

 A seal’s flippers resemble our hands (A.S. Byatt, BBC4).

 Somewhere where our lives matter (Malorie Blackman, on BBC4).

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 Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about In Our Time and
for our terms of use… (Melvyn Bragg, BBC4).

Actually, this is the way our  is currently said in British English (and very often in American English
too, although in AE the final r is pronounced). Producing the full triphthong [aʊə] in the
word our sounds a bit unnatural in different varieties of English.

It is also interesting to note that the smoothing of triphtongs bring about some new homophones. Both
[aʊə] and [aɪə] might be produced as [aə], so the words tower and tyre are pronounced [taə], which can
be confusing if you’re not aware of this process.

Another good example of smoothing is the word mayor, which is always pronounced /meə/ in British
English ([meɪər] in American English). Admittedly, in this case the British version is much more
difficult to understand than the American for non native speakers.

Here are some sentences which include the three cases studied above:

 It takes almost an hour to get there.

 There was a great fire that burned down the building.

 She’s the best player in the team.

Two special cases. The triphthongs [əʊə] and [ɔɪə] need some further explanation, so I’ll treat them
separately.

1. The distinguishing fact about the smoothed version of [əʊə] is that it is realized as a monophthong,
the sound /ɜː/. This is only natural if you think that, by taking out the [ʊ] in the middle, you get
two schwas together [əə], which is the same as /ɜː/ (for the relation between /ə/ and /ɜː/, see here).
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Let’s listen to the difference:

 mower  /məʊə/                                                   mower  /mɜː/

And here you have it in context:

 “What’s that awful racket?””It’s my new lawn mower”.

2. The smoothing of the triphthong [ɔɪə] is more controversial, and some authors don’t include it in the
catalogue of triphthongs subject to this process. So, we can safely assume that it happens less often.
Nevertheless, it does happen sometimes (and we have a good example by none other than Ben Kingsley
below), so we’ll treat it here as well.

This is how it sounds:

 employer  /emˈplɔɪə/                                      employer  /emˈplɔə/

And this is a contextualized example:

 I need to talk to my employer today.

And here is sir Ben Kingsley:

 Because I had at least ten years, thank goodness, with the Royal Shakespeare Company (Ben
Kingsley, BBC4).

A useful thing to remember is that smoothing  doesn’t necessarily erase the [ɪ] or [ʊ] in the middle of
the triphthong completely. In some cases, those vowels are heard in a very faint, debilitated form, to the
extent that it might be difficult to say if they are pronounced at all or not.
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Now, let’s listen to a few more examples taken from real life:

 The Fire enters the city’s kind of, if you like, mythos about itself (Jonathan Sawday, BBC4).

 The kingdom of Macedon became a major player in Greek politics (Paul Cartlidge, BBC4).

 We talked in bed for a quarter of an hour (Julian Barnes, reading from a story by Frank O’Connor,
The New Yorker).

 And the view he has from Firefly is one of the most extraordinary views (Rupert Everett, BBC4).

 It’s associated with the tower of Babel (Melvyn Bragg, BBC4).

 But also the cultural and economic powerhouses of the first cities as well (Eleanor Robson, BBC4).

 Our warning is what could. And this is what could happen (Michael Caine, BBC4).

 The new powers to be given to the authorities to crack down on extremist islamists. It is, he will say,
a struggle or our generation (John Humphrys, BBC4).

Pre-fortis clipping

One of the most important points to take into account if we want to pronounce vowels correctly is
their length. We know that there are long vowels, which in phonetics are marked by a colon after the
corresponding symbol (/ɑː/, /ɜː/, /ɔː/, etc.), and short vowels (/ɪ/, /ʊ/, /ə/, etc.). And we should also
remember that the phoneme /æ/ has a sort of special status because, even though it’s included in the
short vowel group, it’s the longest of the short ones. However, as is often the case in English, that’s not
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all there is to know. We have to learn about a phenomenon called pre-fortis clipping which

changes these notions quite a lot.

The pre-fortis clipping process arises from the fact that the length of a vowel is strongly determined by
the voicing of the consonant that  comes after it (or by the absence of any consonant, if this is the
case). The term  fortis  is equivalent to voiceless  and clipping  stands for shortening. So, what this
convoluted expression means is that when a stressed vowel is followed by a
voiceless consonant within the same syllable, the length of that vowel is considerably reduced.
This is especially noticeable in the case of long vowels, which are shortened up to half their length.

Listen to some examples and note how clearly this difference can be seen:

Long vowels

Long vowel followed by voiced consonant or pause      Long vowel followed by voiceless consonant

 churn   /ʧɜːn/                                                                                          church   /ʧɜːʧ/

 war     /wɔː/                                                                                             warp     /wɔːp/

 cheese    /ʧiːz/                                                                                         cheat     /ʧiːt/

 read       /riːd/                                                                                    reach    /riːʧ/

 word     /wɜːd/                                                                                         work     /wɜːk/

 leave     /liːv/                                                                                            leaf        /liːf/
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 hard     /hɑːd/                                                                                        heart    /hɑːt/

 wee      /wiː/                                                                                              week     /wiːk/

 bawl    /bɔːl/                                                                                              bought /bɔːt/

As you can see, vowels followed by a voiced consonant or a pause keep their normal length, whereas
those coming before a voiceless consonant become much shorter.

 Diphthongs

 This process applies to diphthongs as well:

 Diphthong followed by voiced consonant or pause          Diphthong followed by voicelss consonant

 rise   /raɪz/                                                                                                  rice   /raɪs/ 

 play   /pleɪ/                                                                                                plate  /pleɪt/

 know   /nəʊ/                                                                                              note   /nəʊt/

 bow   /baʊ/                                                                                                 bout   /baʊt/

 employ   /emˈplɔɪ/                                                                                      exploit   /eksˈplɔɪt/

 coal   /kəʊl/                                                                                                coat   /kəʊt/

 scare   /skeə/                                                                                              scarce   /skeəs/

 Short vowels
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 Now, let’s see how pre-fortis clipping affects short vowels too, although the difference is not so
obvious:

 Short vowel followed by voiced consonant or pause     Short vowel followed by voicelss consonant

 man   /mæn/                                                                                            map   /mæp/

 lag   /læg/                                                                                                lack   /læk/

 bid   /bɪd/                                                                                                bit   /bɪt/

 bill   /bɪl/                                                                                                bitch   /bɪʧ/

 pull   /pʊl/                                                                                             put   /pʊt/

 good   /gʊd/                                                                                          look   /lʊk/

 bum   /bʌm/                                                                                          but   /bʌt/

 shun   /ʃʌn/                                                                                                                shut   /ʃʌt/

 cod   /kɒd/                                                                                                                 cot   /kɒt/

 mob    /mɒb/                                                                                                             mock  /mɒk/

 Consonant clusters

 Another interesting fact to remember is that, whenever more than one consonant follow the vowel, the
clipping also occurs provided that there is a voiceless one within the same syllable .

 
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Vowel followed by more than one consonant               Vowel followed by more than one consonant

 lamb   /læm/                                                                                               lamp   /læmp/

 bend   /bend/                                                                                              bent   /bent/

 hill   /hɪl/                                                                                                hilt   /hɪlt/

 hell   /hel/                                                                                                help   /help/

 fell   /fel/                                                                                                  felt   /felt/

 hum   /hʌm/                                                                                             hump   /hʌmp/

 thin   /θɪn/                                                                                                think   /θɪnk/

 Nouns and verbs

 There are also pairs of verbs and nouns which are actually the same word, the only difference being
that the verb ends in a voiced consonant while the noun ends in its voiceless counterpart. This may be
reflected in the spelling (devise-device, believe-belief) or not (abuse, house). And here too, in the case
of voiceless final consonants (nouns), the preceding vowel is shortened by the pre-fortis clipping
phenomenon.

Verbs                                                                                                          Nouns

 abuse   /əˈbjuːz/                                                                                   abuse   /əˈbjuːs/

 house   /haʊz/                                                                                     house   /haʊs/

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 devise   /dɪˈvaɪz/                                                                                 device   /dɪˈvaɪs/

 mouth   /maʊð/                                                                                               mouth   /maʊθ/

 excuse   /ɪkˈskjuːz/                                                                                         excuse   /ɪkˈskjuːs/

 believe   /bɪˈliːv/                                                                                           belief   /bɪˈliːf/

 use   /juːz/                                                                                                      use   /juːs/

 prove   /pruːv/                                                                                                proof    /pruːf/

 
How important is all this? The shortening of vowels because of a voiceless following consonant is
a far more important fact than might seem at first glance. The reason is that it is linked to one of those
English features, the devoicing of final consonants, that can make English a devilishly difficult
language to understand. Since I’ve already written about it, I’ll just outline it in a nutshell: voiced
consonants are normally devoiced when they are in final position and followed by a pause.
Consequentely, they sound very much like their voiceless counterparts (/b/ like /p/, /d/ like /t/, etc.).
So, how shall we distinguish hard  from heart  if both d  and t  sound more or less the same, you may
well ask? The answer is in the length of the vowel, because although voiced consonants are devoiced
the length of the preceding vowel remains intact. So, hard and heart are not distinguished by the final d 
or t, as they sound virtually the same, but by the length of the vowel /ɑː/, which is longer
in hard because the /d/, even if devoiced here, is in origin a voiced consonant. This is exactly what
native speakers do.

Activity: Using your phone, record yourself pronouncing all the examples of diphthongs given in
this module. (1 point for each word)