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But for [i], the muscles are more tense than for [ɪ]. The same is true for the vowels in late and let, [e] and [ɛ]. And also for the vowels in food and foot, [u] and [ʊ] It can be hard to feel the physical difference between tense and lax vowels, but the distinction is actually an important one in the mental grammar of English.
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Mar 10, 2012 · Lax vowels in English are difficult to explain. The two most important of these are the aforementioned ‘oo’ in ‘look’ and the ‘i’ in ‘kit.’*. On a very theoretical level, the lax ‘oo’ is pronounced like the ‘oo’ in ‘goose’ but with the tongue slightly more front and lower, while lax ‘i’ is pronounced like the ...
- /v/
- /R/
- /j/ and / ʤ/
- /s/ + Consonant in Word Initial Position
- Vowels
Sounds like /v/ that don’t exist in Spanish are always tricky. To further complicate things, the Spanish alphabet contains both the letters “b” and “v”, which a few centuries ago represented two different sounds, but today both are pronounced as the same phoneme. Consequently, Spanish speakers tend to produce the Spanish /b/ sound for both letters....
Second language learners tend to transfer their own sound system to the new language. For Spanish speakers, a good example is the English /r/ sound, which is often substituted by either the tapped or trilled Spanish /r/ sounds. In my experience, students will get to grips with /r/ at the beginning of words at lower levels, but at higher levels they...
/j/ is the sound we make at the beginning of “you;” /ʤ/, the sound we make at the beginning of “jazz.” To English speakers, these are completely separate sounds, but in Spanish they are allophones, which means they are perceived as two versions of the same sound. This means that Spanish learners are bound to not only have trouble producing /j/ and ...
In Spanish, there are no words that start with /s/ plus another consonant, but in English this consonant cluster is very common: “start,” “school,” “Spanish,” etc. At least in Spain, where I teach, students seem to invariably insert a vowel at the beginning of these words. In my experience, my students are quite capable of pronouncing a word like “...
Now we will turn our attention to vowel sounds. In general, these are harder to teach than consonants, because we can’t refer to any specific points of contact where the sounds are articulated in the mouth. English vowels are particularly troublesome for Spanish speakers, because Spanish, like Japanese and other languages, has only five pure vowel ...
Dec 6, 2023 · The primary distinction between lax and tense vowels lies in their length and the tension of the muscles used in their production. Lax vowels are shorter and produced with relatively loose muscles in the vocal apparatus. In contrast, tense vowels are longer and require relatively tense muscles for their articulation.
- Lax vowels are shorter sounds produced with relatively loose muscles in the vocal apparatus. They occur in words like “bit,” “bet,” and “hat.”
- Tense vowels are longer sounds produced with relatively tense muscles in the vocal apparatus. They typically occur at the end of one-syllable words...
- The main difference between lax and tense vowels is their length and the tension of the muscles used to produce them. Lax vowels are shorter and pr...
- Mastering the distinction between lax and tense vowels is important for accurate pronunciation in American English. Understanding and correctly pro...
- Practicing and refining the pronunciation of lax and tense vowels can lead to improved language fluency and clarity in speech. Focus on recognizing...
The glides j and w in the transcription of tense vowels in English reflect the phonetic diphthongal quality of these vowels, which is especially evident when one compares the pronunciation of English say and Spanish se. There are different ways of transcribing that vowel, e.g. [se], [se:], [sei], [se ɪ], [se I] and [sej]. Transcriptions like ...
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Contrasts between two vowels on the basis of tenseness, and even phonemic contrasts, are common in many languages, including English.For example, in most English dialects, beet and bit are contrasted by the vowel sound being tense in the first word but not the second; i.e., / iː / (as in beet) is the tense counterpart to the lax / ɪ / (as in bit); the same is true of / uː / (as in kook ...
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An example in Vietnamese is the letters ă and â representing lax vowels, and the letters a and ơ representing the corresponding tense vowels. Some languages like Spanish are often considered as having only tense vowels, but since the quality of tenseness is not a phonemic feature in this language, it cannot be applied to describe its vowels in any meaningful way.
