Vowel Model v3

Vowel Model v1 is the model that I am currently using to teach English pronunciation.

Vowel Model v1

Vowel Model v2

Vowel Model v3 (latest)

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I was developing Vowel Model v2 when I realised that I'd included a vowel incorrectly in one of the vowel sets, and that this incorrect inclusion meant that the whole model was possibly incorrect.

Actually, some of the underlying concepts are good, and it seems to work well as a teaching method, so I am going to continue developing it anyway and see if I can resolve the issues some other way.

Here is the culmination of a spontaneous rebuild of my vowel classification hypothesis.

Notice how there's loads of symmetry throughout, but also that every symmetry is slightly broken in one or two ways. To be honest, this isn't a massive surprise, as English is a living language, dating back through the centuries, with hundreds of millions of speakers and thousands of accents.

Actually, I'm pretty surprised to discover such a clean symmetry!

Look at how the vowels are now grouped:

• Four distinct mouth regions.

  • high-central, mid-back, low, mid-front

• Two prime variants in each region.

  • high-central — ɪ, ɵ — pit, put

  • mid-back — o, ɔ — bought, pot

  • low — ɑ, a — laugh, cat

  • mid-front — ɛ, ɜ — bed, bird

• A rhotic for each of the six key variants.

  • ɪɚ, ɵɚ, oɚ, ɑɚ, ɛɚ, ɜ˞ ː

  • here, cure, four, star, there, fur

• A palatal diphthong for four variants:

  • ɪj, oj, ɑj, ɛj

  • feed, boy, fly, name

• a labial diphthong for the other four variants:

  • ɵʉ, ɔʉ, aʉ, ɜʉ

  • food, cold, house, home

• And then the . Poor souls.

The tidiness is attractive, but that doesn’t mean it’s definitely correct!