Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Chapter 12: What Accent? Teaching Pronunciation 175

The phoneme /ə/ is called the schwa. It represents the sound that causes
the most confusion as it can be represented by so many vowels. However,
it only occurs in a syllable that carries no stress, or strong emphasis. Some
words may include the schwa when the word is not stressed but change the
pronunciation when it is stressed. Consider ‘can’ in these two statements, for
example:

Can we talk?

Yes we can.

You probably stressed ‘talk’ in the first statement, if you said it at normal
speed, and said ‘can’ very quickly using the schwa. In the second statement
‘can’ is stressed a lot more so the schwa changes to /æ/.

Doing double vowel sounds

Double vowel sounds are literally two vowels combined to make one sound.

You have to move your jaw bone to say them and students find them strange

so they often exchange a double vowel for a single one. They may pronounce

train /tren/ instead of /trein/ However, good use of double vowels really helps

in creating a more native sounding accent.

Phoneme Examples

/iə/ ear, beer, merely, career

/ei/ mate, weight, daytime, ace

/υə/ pure, sewer, cruel, fuel

/ɔi/ destroy, ointment, boiling, buoy

/əi/ oh, photo, motor, loan

/eə/ rare, bear, malaria, heir

/ai/ my, wider, style, pile

/aυ/ loud, cow, plough, ouch

Saying consonants

Many of the consonant phonemes look exactly like the alphabet but you need
to check, as a significant number may be new to you or misleading. So look at
the example words to make sure that the sound matches your expectations.
Take /j/ for example. It’s pronounced like y in yacht not j in jump.

Different versions of the phonemic chart exist. They always show the same
phonemes but in different orders. Say the phonemes out loud in the order I
show them here and you notice that they’re grouped according to the speech
organs you use to make them. For example /p/ and /b/ both use the upper
and lower lips.