How to Pronounce American English Vowels

12/28/2015

The way you pronounce vowels in American English is influenced by the vowel system in your native language. The Speech Modification Accent Reduction Technique, or SMART, has labels for the American vowels for ease of understanding, but we also use the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols or IPA, in order for you to see which vowels are the same in your native language and in American English, and which are different. Many languages have the following vowels: Vowel ee, /i/, vowel ay, /e/, vowel ah, /a/, vowel oo, /u/ and vowel o, /o/. Less common in other languages are vowel ɪ, /ɪ/, vowel eh, /ɛ/, vowel A, /æ/, vowel U, /ʊ/, vowel schwa /ə, ʌ/ and vowel er /ɹ/. These are more commonly mispronounced in English because they are not present in the vowel inventory of your native language.

Even if you do not have error patterns on some of the vowels, you likely would benefit from practice on them. Why is this? Because even the vowels common in other languages are pronounced differently in American English. While many other languages simple say one sound for these vowels, the American style is to use more than one sound, and to have a change in pitch. This requires holding vowel sounds a little bit longer.

So, how do American vowels sound? In general, we use two sounds for each vowel, and two pitches, high to low. So, vowel ee does not sound just like /i/, but rather ee-uh, starting with the /i/ and sliding to /ʌ/. Start with a higher pitch and slide to a lower pitch. Ee-uh. Easy! Well, not so easy if you aren’t used to it. But using SMART practice, you can shift your habitual patterns and start to make American vowels in common words and phrases. Let’s try the vowels which are most common in languages other than English. Remember we are talking about vowel sounds, not written letters.

Vowel ee sounds like /i/-/ʌ/