Vowels

In SBE there are 12 vowel (or monophthong) phonemes.Vowels are long (5) or short (7). Long vowels are marked with a length mark. However, vowels are considerably shorter in front of fortis consonants than in other positions. In practice this means that a long vowel in front of a fortis consonant might be shorter than a short vowel in front of a lenis consonant. Vowels are therefore primarily distinguished from each other by their quality, not length. As this particular phenomenon is extremely important for the understanding of English words, students should take great care to practice vowels in different contexts, i.e. in words with fortis and lenis consonants.
Most important for the production of vowels, is tongue position. The illustrations show how the tongue position varies from close to open, from front to back. Back vowels are produced with lip rounding, in contrast to front and central vowels, where the lips are spread. The tongue position is reflected in the diagram on the left, where sounds are shown to be front, central or back, and close, half close, half open, and open. Click the button symbols to go to the individual sound, or Next to follow the course structure.