English phonology

Phonemes

Consonants

Consonant examples

Sonorants

• The pronunciation of varies by dialect:
• * Received Pronunciation has two main allophones of : the clear, or plain, , and the dark, or velarized, . The clear variant is used before vowels when they are in the same syllable, and the dark variant when the precedes a consonant or is in syllable-final position before silence.
• * In South Wales, Ireland, and the Caribbean, is usually clear, and in North Wales, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand it is usually dark.
• * In General American and Canada, is generally dark, but to varying degrees: before stressed vowels it is neutral or only slightly velarized. In southern U.S. accents it is noticeably clear between vowels, and in some other positions.
• * In urban accents of Southern England, as well as New Zealand and some parts of the United States, can be pronounced as an approximant or semivowel at the end of a syllable.
• Depending on dialect, has at least the following allophones in varieties of English around the world :
• * postalveolar approximant
• * retroflex approximant
• * labiodental approximant
• * alveolar flap
• * alveolar trill
• * voiced uvular fricative
• In most dialects is labialized in many positions, as in reed and tree ; in the latter case, the may be slightly labialized as well.
• In some rhotic accents, such as General American, when not followed by a vowel is realized as an r-coloring of the preceding vowel or its coda: nurse, butter.
• The distinctions between the nasals are neutralized in some environments. For example, before a final, or there is nearly always only one nasal sound that can appear in each case:, or respectively. This effect can even occur across syllable or word boundaries, particularly in stressed syllables: synchrony is pronounced whereas synchronic may be pronounced with either or. For other possible syllable-final combinations, see in the Phonotactics section below.

  Obstruents

• The allophones of the fortes include:
• *aspirated when they occur in the onset of a stressed syllable, as in potato. In clusters involving a following liquid, the aspiration typically manifests as the devoicing of this liquid. These sounds are unaspirated after within the same syllable, as in stan, span, scan, and at the ends of syllables, as in mat, map, mac. The voiceless fricatives are nearly always unaspirated, but a notable exception is English-speaking areas of Wales, where they are often aspirated.
• * In many accents of English, fortis stops are glottalized in some positions. That may be heard either as a glottal stop preceding the oral closure or as a substitution of the glottal stop for the oral stop. can be only pre-glottalized. Pre-glottalization normally occurs in British and American English when the fortis consonant phoneme is followed by another consonant or when the consonant is in final position. Thus football and catching are often pronounced and, respectively. Even more frequently, glottal replacement happens in such cases involving, so that football is pronounced. In addition, however, glottal replacement is increasingly common in British English when occurs between vowels if the preceding vowel is stressed; thus better is often pronounced by younger speakers as. Such t-glottalization also occurs in many British regional accents, including Cockney, where it can also occur at the end of words, and where and are sometimes treated the same way.
• *For some RP-speakers, final voiceless stops, especially, may become ejectives.
• Among stops, both fortes and lenes:
• * May have no audible release in the word-final position. These allophones are more common in North America than Great Britain.
• * Almost always have a masked release before another plosive or affricate, i.e. the release of the first stop is made after the closure of the second stop. This also applies when the following stop is homorganic, as in top player. A notable exception is Welsh English in which stops are usually released in that environment.
• * The affricates have a mandatory fricative release in all environments.
• Very often in the United States and Canada and less frequently in Australia and New Zealand, both can be pronounced as a voiced flap in certain positions: when they come between a preceding stressed vowel and precede an unstressed vowel or syllabic. Examples include water, bottle, petal, '. The flap may even appear at word boundaries, as in put' it on. When the combination appears in such positions, some American speakers pronounce it as a nasalized flap that may become indistinguishable from, so winter may be pronounced similarly or identically to winner.
• Yod-coalescence is a process that palatalizes the clusters,, and into,, and respectively, frequently occurring with clusters that would be considered to span a syllable boundary.
• *Yod-coalescence in stressed syllables, such as in tune and dune, occurs in Australian, Cockney, Estuary English, Hiberno-English, Newfoundland English, South African English, and to a certain extent in New Zealand English and Scottish English. This can lead to additional homophony; for instance, dew and due come to be pronounced the same as Jew.
• *In certain varieties such as Australian English, South African English, and New Zealand English, and in stressed syllables can coalesce into and, respectively. In Australian English for example, assume is pronounced by some speakers. Furthermore, some British, Canadian, American, New Zealand and Australian speakers may change the sound to before ; for example, these speakers pronounce strewn'' as.
• The postalveolar consonants are strongly labialized:.
• In addition to, the sequences also have affricate-like realizations in certain positions, but usually only are considered to constitute the monophonemic affricates of English because only they are found in all of morpheme-initial, -internal, and -final positions, and native speakers typically perceive them as single units.

  Vowels

• RP and General American divide words among the,,, and sets separately from one another; RP has the phonemes , , and ; whereas General American has the phonemes and . In a few North American accents, namely in Eastern New England words do not have the vowel of but instead merge with.
• Although the notation is used for the vowel of in RP and General American, the actual pronunciation in RP may be closer to a near-open central vowel, especially among older speakers. In modern RP, this vowel is increasingly realized as to avoid the clash with the lowered variety of in the region. In General American, is realized as.
• RP transcriptions use rather than largely for convenience and historical tradition; it does not necessarily represent a different sound from the General American phoneme, as the vowel is generally realized as in modern RP.
• The different notations used for the vowel of in RP and General American reflect a difference in the most common phonetic realizations of that vowel.
• The triphthongs given in the RP table are usually regarded as sequences of two phonemes ; however, in RP, these sequences frequently undergo smoothing into single diphthongs or even monophthongs.
• The different notations used here for some of the Australian vowels reflect the phonetic realization of those vowels in Australian: a central rather than in, a more closed rather than in, a close-mid rather than traditional RP's in, an open-mid rather than traditional RP's in, an opener rather than somewhat closer in, a central rather a back in and, and somewhat different pronunciations of most of the diphthongs. Note that central in, close-mid in and open-mid in are standard realizations in modern RP and the difference between modern RP and Australian English in these vowels lies almost only in transcription, rather than pronunciation.
• Both Australian and RP are long monophthongs, the difference between them being in tongue height: Australian is close-mid, whereas the corresponding RP vowel is open-mid.

• The vowel is generally pronounced more open, approaching, by modern RP speakers. In American speech, however, there is a tendency for it to become more closed, tenser and even diphthongized, particularly in certain environments, such as before a nasal consonant, though younger speakers of some varieties are lowering like RP speakers. Some American accents, for example those of New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore, make a marginal phonemic distinction between and, although the two occur largely in mutually exclusive environments. See :/æ/ raising.
• A significant number of words have in General American, but in RP. The pronunciation varies between and in Australia, with speakers from South Australia using more extensively than speakers from other regions.
• In General American and Canadian, many of the vowels can be r-colored by way of realization of a following. This is often transcribed phonetically using a vowel symbol with an added retroflexion diacritic ; thus the symbol has been created for an r-colored schwa as in, and the vowel of can be modified to make so that the word start may be transcribed. Alternatively, the sequence might be written to indicate an r-colored offglide. The vowel of is generally always r-colored in these dialects, and this can be written .
• In modern RP and other dialects, many words from the group are coming to be pronounced by an increasing number of speakers with the vowel.
• The vowels of and are commonly pronounced as narrow diphthongs, approaching and, in RP. Near-RP speakers may have particularly marked diphthongization of the type and, respectively. In General American, the pronunciation varies between a monophthong and a diphthong.