Questions tagged [phonemes]
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In Northern England, what vowel phoneme is used in “can’t”?
Which vowel phoneme, START or TRAP, do people in the North of England usually use in can’t?
(Obviously the northern START is pronounced like a longer version of TRAP, which is not the case in the ...
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What are common words in which written ‹i› is pronounced as the phoneme /ai/?
I am a Brazilian teacher of the English language for Brazilian high school students. In this sense, the draft of this table has helped me a lot. So, my question about examples was only because I would ...
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Is the last of "happy" a distinct phoneme? [duplicate]
As I've read the y in happy is pronunced /i/, but is it a distinct phoneme? My guess is that it could be regarded as a allophone of /iː/ or /ɪ/. I've read that it's pronunced the same as either of ...
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Can American ‘bought’ sometimes sound like ‘bop’?
In American English, I’ve noticed that the word bought sometimes sounds like bop when followed by a word starting with a bilabial consonant, such as [p], [b], or [m].
For example, She bought me a car ...
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American 'n' sound is sometimes retroflex?
In American English fast speech, I observed that the 'n' sound in certain words containing -rn- consonant clusters such as 'learning' and 'burning' appear to be pronounced as a voiced retroflex nasal [...
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Is the T in ‘mistook’ pronounced the same as the T in ‘mistake’ is?
Should mistook be pronounced like “mis + took” — or like “misdook” (like the t in mistake)?
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English minimal pair for /uː/ and /ʊ/ in which /uː/ is rendered as [u]?
There are several English minimal pairs for the phonemes /ʊ/ and /uː/ in which the latter is pronounced [uː], not [u], according to 'common' pronunciation. For example, 'soot', /sʊt/ and 'suit', /suːt/...
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Are there other examples of names similar to "McKeen", with multiple capitals within a word and non-initial capital letter placement within graphemes?
I'm breaking down the phoneme-grapheme pairs for the name, "McKeen".
The "M" grapheme appears to represent the sound /mə/ ("muh"). I've noticed the "uh" sound ...
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American English retroflex 'd' in the word 'guardian'?
In American English fast speech, I have noticed that the 'd' sound in words like 'birdy' and 'guardian' sometimes appears to be pronounced as a voiced retroflex plosive (/ɖ/) instead of the standard ...
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How phonetically distinct in terms of quality (tongue gesture) are /ɜː/ and /ə/ in Received Pronunciation?
The English Wikipedia article on Received Pronunciation uses two particular vowel charts adapted from two sources, an article by Peter Roach titled British English: Received Pronunciation published in ...
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Occurrences of voiced VS unvoiced 'th'
Is there a resource for determining how common one or the other is in English? I doubt that it varies between BrE vs AmE etc
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Pronunciation of "es" at the end of the words [duplicate]
Is there a some of kind of rule affecting the pronunciation of "es" coming at the end of a word? In some words I hear "-es" as "ɪz" and in some others I hear it as a &...
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How do you syllabify "anxious" or "luxury" or "taxi"?
The grapheme X can sometimes be pronounced with a two-phoneme sequence, such as the following:
/ks/ - taxi
/gz/ - exact
/kʃ/ - anxious
/ŋz/ - anxiety
/gʒ/ - luxury
For these two-phoneme sequences, I'...
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Why are "er”, "ar” and "or" often listed as R-colored vowels but "air”, "ear" and "oor/ure" are not? Are they vowels or vowel+consonant?
NOTE: I speak a rhotic variety of English.
I am struggling with how to explain r-coloured vowels/vocalic R to teachers during a presentation on the phonemes of English. Many grapheme-phoneme lists ...
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Do "beaches" and "preaches" end with different phonemes?
Not being an English native speaker, I'm consulting an online tool that seemed to me most reliable in order to get the phonemic transcription of words, called "CMU Pronouncing Dictionary".
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