Jj is for Jottings 86.  R-Controlled Vowels and Diphthongs.

There are other vowel sounds, apart from the short and long vowels.  These include r-controlled vowels, schwa and diphthongs.

 R-CONTROLLED VOWELS.

When a vowel is followed by r, the sound changes, and the result is considered neither long nor short.  These are /ur/ as in fern, bird, and hurt; /ar/ as in park; and /or/ as in fork.

Note that Americans actually pronounce the /r/ in r-controlled vowels, including on the ends of words; we Australians do not.  When I was first working as a speech pathologist in what was then the Education Department about 40 years ago, an American speech pathologist joined the team.  After some weeks or months it came up in conversation that he’d noticed a lot of Australian children who had problems with their /r/ sounds.  You guessed it – he was treating them for the missing /r/ sound in r-controlled vowels.  I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t realised that none of us pronounced those /r/ sounds.

SCHWA.

We won’t deal with this here because schwa has an article all on its own – just click on the link.

DIPHTHONGS.

Most sounds we say are monophthongs – mono  meaning ‘one’ and phthong meaning ‘sound’.  The mouth stays in one position and the result is a single sound.  A diphthong is one vowel sound formed by the combination of two vowel sounds.  A diphthong begins with one vowel sound and glides onto another.  The first sound is much longer and stronger than the second.  Examples are oi and ow.  (Note that many people say “dipthong”, but that is incorrect – the spelling is ph, and therefore it is pronounced as /f/.  Same with diphtheria – not “diptheria”.)

We can have two vowels together which do not form a diphthong, but are just two monophthongs side by side eg. chaos,violin, triage.

Diphthongs Can Be a Little Confusing.

This is only because three of the long vowels are actually diphthongs – /ay/, /oe/ and /ie/.  These three sounds are definitely diphthongs, as any linguist will tell you, but in the world of teaching reading they tend not to be mentioned as such, probably because of the fact that they overlap with long vowels, and teachers of reading don’t really talk about diphthongs much anyway.

Which Sounds Are Actually Diphthongs?

There are 8 in total, with 3 groups.  This is where knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet would be very useful, but I will use known words as examples.  Say each word out loud and listen for the two elements and the change from one to the other.

Three glide towards schwa, an example of each being ear; air; pure.

Three glide towards /i/, as in pig.  An example of each is same (long /ay/); kind (long /ie/); coin.

Two glide towards /oo/ as in book.  Examples are owl; home (long /oe/)

How to Feel the Difference Between a Monophthong and a Diphthong.

Put an index finger on either side of your mouth. Say the vowel sound /a/ (as in apple) and your fingers will stay in the same position because your mouth doesn’t move. The same thing happens with most vowel sounds. However, if you say the vowel sounds /oy/ or /ow/, or any of the others on the diphthong list, your fingers will move because your mouth – mainly your lips and tongue – moves from one vowel sound to another.

And Then There are Triphthongs.

Examples of triphthongs in English are liar, royal.  Generally they are made up of a diphthong followed by schwa.  Australians often make fake triphthongs and even quadraphthongs by adding drawling-type vowels.  I can’t give examples because they happen in the moment.

 

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