The vowel space is the space within the vocal tract that is used to generate vowel sounds (or phthongs). It’s useful to replace the word ‘vowel’ with ‘phthong’, as it is very easy to equate vowels with a restricted number of letters within a language’s alphabet, rather than set of sounds. Our curiosity must necessarily start from these sounds themselves.
In practical and anatomical terms, a phthong shapes air flow. It does not obstruct air flow. Obstruction is the task of consonant sounds (or obstruents).
The main articulators involved in the generation of phthong sounds are the tongue and the lips. Below is the vowel chart, as established within the International Phonetic Alphabet (revised in 2020).
As mentioned in the chart, ‘where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel’. This refers to the rounding of the lips. The degree of rounding is not specified, although this could be guided further through the use of diacritics (to be discussed at a later date).
The labels down the side and running along the top of the chart give us specific information about the position of the tongue.
The front of the tongue (not the tongue tip or blade, which refer to the apex of the tongue, and a thin strip behind this, respectively) can be raised, flat or lowered. Raising brings the front of the tongue close /kləʊ̯s/ to the roof of the front of the mouth (more specifically towards the hard palate/postalveolar area). Lowering it brings the front of the tongue down, leaving the space open, and the front of the tongue in a cupped position, as if you were holding a blueberry in the small dip that is produced. Slowly transitioning from a raised to a lowered position might result in the following sounds.
Within the gradual shift that occurs within this recording are countless possibilities for fronted phthong sounds.
The same is true of the back phthongs, as well as the centralised phthongs. We intentionally do not provide you with all of the answers (or recordings), as part of the tactic for maintaining longevity is discovering these sounds for yourself, matching the sound generated to a tangible sense of how the tongue and lips have moved to make the target sound. Moving towards a conscious effort to make these changes allows us to look at the difference required to get from one’s own native accent’s phthong set to a target phthong.
Imagine then, what is occurring as you transition from the a front to a back vowel. Moving from a front open phthong to a back open phthong, for example, might sound something like this.
You might imagine your blueberry from earlier rolling from the front to the back of your tongue as the cupping shape shifts backwards.
We highly recommend you explore the vowel chart in your own time. This is the best way to take control of the movement of your articulators. With control, modification of sound is a more manageable process, and results in sustainable change.
The Accent Centre 