Posts Tagged articulator

In this step, we’ll experiment with variations on Central vowel sounds. So far, we’ve been working our way through the various non-English vowel sounds, starting with Gliding back and forth through the Close Vowels, then Sliding downward with the Front Vowels, and then with the Back Vowels. Then we took a day to explore the difference between "schwa" and "uh" as in comma or strut. These last two are, in many ways, "Central" vowels in English, though the strut vowel is classified as a Back vowel by the International Phonetic Association, or IPA. In some languages, the sound closest to [ʌ] is a back vowel, whereas in English, there is a range of pronunciations for the vowel in strut. In some accents this is very far back (as in parts of Texas), while in others (e.g. in London working class accents, aka "Cockney") it is quite far forward, in the range of where the IPA puts the rarely used [ɐ] symbol.

For this experiment, we’ll play with the sounds we establish in our contrast of the "schwa" and "uh" vowels. To begin, let’s start with a more closed version of "schwa", represented by a "reversed "e" in the IPA, [ɘ]. This vowel is, essentially a more closed version of "schwa". That’s easy! Simply say that "schwa" sound with your mouth almost shut. Next we’ll do rounded version of this new sound, represented in the IPA by [ɵ], a barred "o" symbol. If you think of this sound as a centralized [o], it might be easier to say! Start with a "pure /o/" sound, as if you were saying goat with a Scots accent. Then move the centre arch of your tongue forward, as we did when we played with gliding between [i] and [u], only with the mouth more open. In other words, the [ɵ] is like a more open [ʉ] vowel, which we covered here.

Now, let’s look at the Central vowel that is more open than "Schwa," namely the vowel used in "r-less" accents (a.k.a. "non-rhotic" accents), such as Received Pronunciation, and many other regional accents of England. This is the r-less version of the vowel found in nurse words; many rhotic speakers, if you ask them to say words like word, heard, nurse, first, they will instinctively make the correct sound for this vowel. The IPA’s symbol for this sound is [ɜ]. ̆(For those with a rhotic accent, who have r-colouring on this vowel, the symbol for that is the same, plus an added diacritic that looks like a little "hook" or "wing" on the upper right hand corner of the symbol: [ɝ].) The rounded version of the non-rhotic vowel is represented by the IPA symbol [ɞ]. To make this sound, think of the non-rhotic sound found in words like nurse, and round your lips forward strongly. You may find that this makes you sound a little like a poor impersonation of Arnold Schwartzenegger, or perhaps like "Hans and Franz" saying "Girly Man".

So, to review, the vowels in the Central area of the mouth are as follows (from top to bottom, in pair where possible):
Close:[ɨ ʉ]
Close-mid: [ɘ ɵ]
Mid: [ə]
Open-mid: [ɜ ɞ]
Fairly Open: [ɐ]

If you’ve really gotten these vowels under your belt you should be able Slide through the unrounded vowels in one continuous go: [ɨ ɘ ə ɜ ɐ]. Then, to do it with rounded sounds, you’ll have to make sounds that the IPA doesn’t have symbols for! (For those, we’ll use the unrounded symbols with ’rounded’ diacritics.) [ʉ ɵ ə̹ ɞ ɐ̹]

If you’ve been following along from when we started, you’ve probably gotten a handle on all the vowels of the IPA by this point. That’s amazing. Our next trick is to begin to play with these new sounds in fun, improvizational ways, so that we begin to "own" the sounds. It’s great that you’ve made these sounds a few times, but now you need to engage with them in ways that get you out of your head and into an expressive communication process, through the sound.

Next: Placement Playtime

In the first part of this step, we made central vowel sounds that were between places familiar to the mouths of GenAm speakers. Today, we’re going to work on a lot of sounds that can be thought of as variations on vowel sounds that English speakers may (or may not) have in their own repertoire of vowels. This should be a playful exploration, so let’s try to have fun as we whizz through these new sounds! This post will feature lots of vowel charts from the IPA, so it may be a bit longer post than usual, because of all the images.

So far we’ve done the Close vowels: [i y] [ɨ ʉ] [ɯ u].

We’re now going to focus on the Remaining Front Vowels:
[ɪ ʏ]
[e ø]
[ɛ œ]
[æ]
[a ɶ]

Each of these pairs of sounds begins with a sound that should be familiar to most native English speakers. By referring to a Lexical Set, we should be able to get at least in the ball park of the standard sound for these vowels.

(Note that, should your personal accent be dramatically different from mine, your mileage may vary quite significantly. You may have to imagine yourself speaking with a Standardized accent in order to get the concept of this experience for yourself.)

Here are the lexical sets associated with the first vowel of each pair:
[ɪ ʏ] kit
[e ø] face (the beginning of this diphthong)
[ɛ œ] dress
[æ] trap (this front vowel doesn’t have a non-English pair)
[a ɶ] price (the beginning of this diphthong, as if you’re saying it with a Southern accent)

Here’s how to experiment with each of these sounds. Start by making the first vowel in the pair, for example kit’s [ɪ] vowel. Keeping your tongue shaped as it is for that vowel, round your lips forward into the sound pair, [ʏ]. Now try saying some kit words with the new vowel: "ship, rid, dim." This should sound like your saying those words with your lips stuck in a "kiss-like" position. Next, try saying those words without their final consonants, trying to focus on the non-English vowel at the end. Finally, drop the initial consonant off the front, and say the new non-English vowel on your own.

You’ll notice that the [æ] vowel doesn’t have a non-English pair. That’s because the International Phonetic Association says that there is no language in the world that uses a rounded equivalent. (That doesn’t mean that you can’t try to make a rounded version of it, though!) Apparently, the [æ] vowel itself is quite rare in the world’s languages, too.

On another note, I found the rounded open front vowel [ɶ] to be quite hard to make — and perhaps so do others: it’s a very rare sound in the world’s languages, appearing in some obscure dialects of Swiss German.

To wrap up the rounded front vowels, try going through all 5 of them (including the [y] sound we’ve already worked on, by anchoring your lips in a rounded position with the first sound and then gradually opening your mouth. It can help to "think" the English vowels you know as you’re making them: [y ʏ ø œ ɶ] while thinking fleece, kit, face, dress, price. I always find that this kind of exploration is much easier if you can keep the pitch the same through the exploration, so that you can hear the vowel change distinctly and not be distracted by the change in "note."

Because this post is longer than I imagined, I am going to stop here for today. If we did all three areas (Front, Central, Back) of the vowel space, this would be a mamoth post. More on this in the next part!

Next: Non-English Sound Exploration Part 3

In the last two steps of this series, Ride the Wave of the Tongue Part 1 and Part 2, we explored the action of the tongue to make vowel sounds that are not part of the English set of vowels. In this step, we'll use the same idea to find other non-English vowels. Not only does exploring non-English vowels challenge your ability to move your tongue, jaw and lips in new, unusual ways, it also makes demands on your ear, your ability to recognize, identify new sounds, and to use auditory feedback to gauge what you're doing with your mouth.(It may be more accurate to say that these are “non-standard” vowels in English, as they can be applied to English words or lexical sets, as part of regional accents that are non-standard, as you will see below.)

In the last step we explored sounds that were made in the same place in the mouth as English vowels, with variations on lip-rounding (losing it in a place where we English speakers normally have rounding [u] → [ɯ], gaining it in a place where we normally lack rounding [i] → [y].) In this step, we'll be explorinɡ a sound that is made in a place in the mouth where no General American or Standard British vowel lies (though there may be a vowel made there for other regional accents of English, like Scots for instance). To review, in the last two steps we were gliding between a front close vowel and a back close vowel, that is, with the tongue "close" to the roof of the mouth, arching forward toward the front, or arching backward toward the back. Now, we're going to try to find a vowel sound in between "front" and "back", in an area phoneticians call "central."

To find the "central" spot, we're going to go back to the gliding-between-front-and-back process and slow it down. If we slow it down enough that we don't jump between the two sounds but truly slide through the potential vowels that lie between the front and back positions, we can stop half-way and find the central position. I find that it is easiest to start this exploration with the lips rounded, as that lip position creates an intense vibration in the mouth and face, and may make it easier to feel your way through the process. So start with your tongue arched back with lips rounded intensely in an "oo" [u] vowel. Now, locking your lips into that shape, very slowly glide forward along the roof of your mouth toward the [y] vowel. Glide slowly back again to your starting place at [u], and then start again. But this time, stop halfway through. This is the central position, and the IPA symbol for this sound is [ʉ]. (This vowel is used in Scots dialect in words in the goose and foot lexical sets.) This vowel is sometimes represented in Scots writings with an alternate spelling, such as "guid" for "good."

We can switch from [ʉ] to our next "new" vowel by merely letting go of the rounding, and spreading the lips. This should make a somewhat back (i.e. central) version of the /i/ vowel. The IPA generally uses the crossbar to represent the centering principle (as in [ʉ]), so naturally the symbol for the central [i] is [ɨ]. This sound is perhaps a little less useful than the barred-u sound, as there are fewer accents that use it. I've seen people use the symbol to describe a central, unrounded version of the goose and foot lexical sets.

Oddly enough, I've appropriated the barred-i symbol for use in the pretty set in teaching IPA to actors. This usage is perhaps not "strictly ballroom," as the sound I often hear in many speakers from a variety of backgrounds is not quite so much central as it is halfway between the fleece and kit sounds, [i] and [ɪ].

In the next step, we'll look at the rest of the non-English vowels by looking at variations in rounding and centralizing the vowels we already know. Should be fun!

Next: Non-English Sound Exploration Part 2