Pay attention to the sound of the letters in bold. Vowels In General American English General American English has 21 distinct vowel phonemes. There are many words you can make from all vowels. While we have six letters we define as vowels, there are, in English, many. Click on the words to get an idea of these sounds. For instance, if you have a rack that contains A, E, E, I, A, E, U, look for an open R on the board. A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y are the letters we define as vowels, but vowels can also be defined as speech sounds. Standard symbols are used in most English dictionaries.įor each sound there is a word that demonstrates where the sound occurs (word initial, middle, or word final) and how the sound occurs (what letter or letter combinations). The five standard vowels are A, E, I, O, and U.

The words in parentheses represent the IPA transcription. If a speech sound is pronounced without any blockage of the vocal cords, it is considered a vowel. This table shows English vowel sounds with IPA symbols ( International Phonetic Alphabet) and standard symbols ( std).

What are all the vowels