Delahunty and Garvey
Exercise
For each of the vowels in Table 4, find five more words in which the vowel
occurs. Be clear about which symbol most accurately applies to each vow -
el. How is each of these vowels ordinarily spelled?
Lip rounding
As you compared [i] and [u] you probably noticed that your lips changed
shape as you shifted from the front vowel to the back one. Your lips were
rounded as you produced [u]. They were unrounded (spread or neutral)
as you produced [i]. As you moved through the series of back vowels you
may also have noticed that lip rounding decreased as you moved from high
to low. In fact the lips are unrounded during the pronunciation of [A]. In
English, the only rounded vowels are back, though many languages, such as
French and German, have rounded front vowels.
Exercise
Find five pairs of words to illustrate lip rounding. The first member of
each pair of words must include a rounded vowel; the second member
should be as similar as possible to the first, but must include a corre-
sponding vowel that is not rounded. Assign a phonetic symbol to each
vowel, e.g., heat [i], hoot [u]. As always, note how each vowel is ordi-
narily spelled.
Intermediate vowels
First, pronounce the words meat, mitt, mate, met, and mat. Then pronounce
just their vowels:
meat me [i]
mitt [I]
mate may [e]
met [E]
mat []
The vowels we’ve just added, [I] and [E], are intermediate in height between
[i] and [e], and [e] and [], respectively.