stem/Speech/Linguistics/Vowels.md

ALL VOICED Wikipedia - Vowel Sounds

Monophthong

• Vowel whose quality does not change over the duration
• Pure
• Stable
• Speech apparatus doesn't transition

Diphthong

• Glides from one quality to another
• Gliding
• Two targets
  • Tongue and/or other parts  of speech apparatus
    • Moves between
• No highway cowboy
• Often when separate vowels glide naturally in natural speech
  • Also unitary diphthongs as above
    • Heard as single phoneme

Triphthong

• Three qualities
  • [aʊ̯ə̯], hour
  • [aɪ̯ə̯], fire
  • [ɔɪ̯ə̯], employer, "loir"

Hiatus

• Contrast a diphthong
• Two adjacent vowel sounds that don't glide
  • Occur in different syllables
  • Re-elect
  • Hiatus
    • Hiatus and diphthong

Stress & Reduction

• Stress
  • Phonemic
  • Distinguishable
  • Insight/incite
  • Increase/increase
    • Noun or verb
    • Initial-stress-derived-noun
      • Stress to first syllable
      • Turns verb into noun
• Unstressed
  • Reduced vowels
  • Central vowel
    • Schwa
    • ə
    • Most common
    • A - about
    • E - synthesis
    • O - harmony
    • U - medium
    • I - decimal