The phonology (sound system) of English differs between dialects. The descriptions below are most closely applicable to the standard varieties known as Received Pronunciation(RP) and General American. For information concerning a range of other varieties, see IPA chart for English dialects.
Consonants
The table below shows the system of consonant phonemes that functions in most major varieties of English. The symbols are from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and are used in the pronunciation keys of many dictionaries. For more detailed information see English phonology: Consonants.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||||||||||
| Stop | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | ||||||||||
| Affricate | tʃ | dʒ | ||||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | θ | ð | s | z | ʃ | ʒ | (x) | h | ||||||
| Approximant (Lateral) | r | j | w | |||||||||||||
| l | ||||||||||||||||
Where consonants are given in pairs (as with "p b"), the first is voiceless, the second is voiced. Most of the symbols represent the same sounds as they normally do when used as letters (see Writing system below), but /j/ represents the initial sound of yacht. The symbol /ʃ/ represents the sh sound, /ʒ/ the middle sound of vision, /tʃ/ the ch sound, /dʒ/ the sound of j in jump, /θ/ and /ð/ the th sounds in thing and this respectively, and /ŋ/ the ng sound in sing. The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is not a regular phoneme in most varieties of English, although it is used by some speakers in Scots/Gaelic words such as loch or in other loanwords such as Chanukah.
Some of the more significant variations in the pronunciation of consonants are these:
- In non-rhotic accents such as Received Pronunciation and Australian English, /r/ can only appear before a vowel (there is no "r" sound in words like card). The actual pronunciation of /r/ varies between dialects; most common is the alveolar approximant [ɹ].
- In North American English and Australian English, /t/ and /d/ are flapped [ɾ] in many positions between vowels. This means that word pairs such as latter and ladder may approach homophones for speakers of these dialects.
- The th sounds /θ/ and /ð/ are sometimes pronounced as /f/ and /v/ in Cockney, and as dental plosives (contrasting with the usual alveolar plosives) in some Irish varieties. InAfrican American Vernacular English, /ð/ has merged with dental /d/.
- A voiceless w, [ʍ], sometimes written /hw/, for the wh in words like when and which, is preserved in Scottish and Irish English and by some speakers elsewhere.
- The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/ and /k/ are frequently aspirated, particularly at the start of stressed syllables, but they are not aspirated after an initial /s/, as in spin.
Vowels
The system of vowel phonemes and their pronunciation is subject to significant variation between dialects. The table below lists the vowels found in Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American, with examples of words in which they occur. The vowels are represented with symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet; those given for RP are in relatively standard use in British dictionaries and other publications. For more detailed information see English phonology: Vowels.
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Some points to note:
- For words which in RP have /ɒ/, most North American dialects have /ɑ/ (as in the example of box above) or /ɔ/ (as in cloth). However some North American varieties do not have the vowel /ɔ/ at all (except before /r/); see cot–caught merger.
- In present-day Received Pronunciation, the realisation of the /æ/ phoneme is more open than the symbol suggests, and is closer to [a], as in most other accents in Britain. The sound [æ] is now found only in conservative RP.
- In General American and some other rhotic accents, the combination of vowel+/r/ is often realised as an r-coloured vowel. For example, butter /ˈbʌtər/ is pronounced with an r-coloured schwa, [ɚ]. Similarly nurse contains the r-coloured vowel [ɝ].
- The vowel conventionally written /ʌ/ is actually pronounced more centrally, as [ɐ], in RP. In the northern half of England this vowel is replaced by /ʊ/ (so cut rhymes with put).
- In unstressed syllables there may or may not be a distinction between /ə/ (schwa) and /ɪ/ (/ɨ/). So for some speakers there is no difference between roses and Rosa's. For more information see Reduced vowels in English.
- The diphthongs /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ (/oʊ/) tend towards the monophthongal pronunciations [eː] and [oː] in some dialects, including Canadian, Scottish, Irish and Northern English.
- In parts of North America /aɪ/ is pronounced [ʌɪ] before voiceless consonants. This is particularly true in Canada, where also /aʊ/ is pronounced [ʌʊ] in this position. SeeCanadian raising.
- The sound /ʊə/ is coming to be replaced by /ɔː/ in many words; for example, sure is often pronounced like shore. See English-language vowel changes before historic r.
Stress, rhythm and intonation
English is a strongly stressed language. In content words of any number of syllables, as well as function words of more than one syllable, there will be at least one syllable with lexical stress. An example of this is civilization, in which the first and fourth syllables carry stress, and the other syllables are unstressed. The position of stress in English words is not predictable. English also has strong prosodic stress: typically the last stressed syllable of a phrase receives extra emphasis, but this may also occur on words to which a speaker wishes to draw attention. As regards rhythm, English is classed as a stress-timed language: one in which there is a tendency for the time intervals between stressed syllables to become equal, and therefore to shorten unstressed syllables. It is uncertain when English became stress-timed, but as most other surviving Germanic languages are it may date to before the breakup of proto-West Germanic.
Stress in English is sometimes phonemic; that is, capable of distinguishing words. In particular, many words used as verbs and nouns have developed different stress patterns for each use: for example, increase is stressed on the first syllable as a noun, giving increase, but on the second syllable as a verb, giving increase; see also Initial-stress-derived noun. Closely related to stress in English is the process of vowel reduction; for example, in the noun contract the first syllable is stressed and contains the vowel /ɒ/ (in RP), whereas in the verb contract the first syllable is unstressed and its vowel is reduced to /ə/ (schwa). The same process applies to certain common function words like of, which are pronounced with different vowels depending on whether or not they are stressed within the sentence. For more details, see Reduced vowels in English. Despite these practices, phonemic stress in English is generally a convention rather than essential to distinguish homophones: in both these examples, whether the word is being used as a noun or verb should normally be clear from context.
As concerns intonation, the pitch of the voice is used syntactically in English; for example, to convey whether the speaker is certain or uncertain about the polarity: most varieties of English use falling pitch for definite statements, and rising pitch to express uncertainty, as in yes–no questions. There is also a characteristic change of pitch on strongly stressed syllables, particularly on the "nuclear" (most strongly stressed) syllable in a sentence or intonation group. For more details see Intonation (linguistics): Intonation in English.