精通美语语音第2期

A few words on pronunciation

I'd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There aren't too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you'll be familiar with them, look at the chart. It shows eight Tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels.

Tense vowels? Lax vowels ?

In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short. Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that 'hen' has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened.

Here are tense vowels:

[ei] take; [i:] eat; [ai] ice; [əu] hope; [u:] smooth; [o:] caught; [æ] cat; [au] down

Here are lax vowels:

[e] get; [i] it; [u] took; [ə] some

And semivowels:

[ər] her; [əl] dull

Now you try it. Repeat after me.

[i:] [u:] [ei] [æ] [o:] [ai] [əu]

Voiced consonant? Unvoiced consonant?

A consonant is a sound that causes two points of your mouth to come into contact, in three locations----the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the throat. A consonant can either be unvoiced( whispered) or voiced( spoken ), and it can appear to the beginning , middle, or end of a word. You'll notice that for some categories, a particular sound doesn't exist in English.