2.5.- Vowels.
Citas Para Pensar
"Playing "bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing."
Duke Ellington.
There are 12 English vowel sounds! And just 5 in Spanish, so there MUST be a difference.
As you can see, English has got long and short vowels. Whenever you see this symbol:, it means the vowel is long and you have to make sure you produce a long sound.
| Sound | Key word | Most usual spelling |
|---|---|---|
| ɪ | Fish | i |
| i: | Tree | ee, ea, e |
| æ | Cat | a |
| a: | Car | ar, al, a |
| ɒ | Dog | o |
| ɔ: | Horse | or, al, aw |
| ʊ | Bull | u, oo |
| u: | Two | oo, ew, u |
| ɜ: | Girl | ir, ur, er |
| e | Ten | e |
| ʌ | Up | u |
| ə | Computer | many different spellings but always unstressed |
Ejercicio Resuelto
Click to read the Spanish translation.
You should know
Here you have a downloadable phonetic chart, which you can use as a reference.
And then the very useful BBC Learning English pronunciation page.
A step ahead
And here you have some extra pronunciation exercises.
Elementary pronunciation exercises.