Update:
2004-03-21 05:39 PM -0500
TIL
Vowels
Online Phonetics Course
Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/phonetique/table-eng.html
http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/index.html
Authors' last updated: 13 January 1999. Translated from French by
Daniel Ezra Johnson.
Most figures on this page were adapted to English by
Athanasius Lance Arron Hamilton. Please send
any remarks or comments to
Christophe.Pythoud@ling.unil.ch
Downloaded and edited by
U
Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL
Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.
UKT:
The original web-pages used glyphs (graphics in .gif format) to show the phonetic characters.
This slows down the opening of the web-page. However I have used Arial Unicode MS exclusively.
If the IPA character schwa [ ə ] appears on your computer with almost the same shape as
, then be assured that most of
the characters that is displayed on your computer screen is correct. The Burmese characters are
gif-glyphs and you need not have any Burmese font.
This paper is for those who can write Myanmar sar
{myan'ma sa}
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UKT: Only 25 vowels are
listed by UNIL.
The chief characteristic of the vowels is the freedom with which the air stream, once
out of the glottis, passes through the speech organs. The supra-glottal resonators do not
cut off or constrict the air; they cause only resonance, that is to say, the reinforcement
of certain frequency ranges. A vowel's timbre (or quality) depends on the following
elements:
• the number of active resonators (among the oral, labial, and nasal cavities);
• the shape of the oral cavity;
• the size of the oral cavity.
There are three possible resonators involved in the articulation of a vowel:
the
oral cavity,
the labial cavity,
the nasal cavity.
If the soft palate is raised, the air does not enter the nasal cavity,
and passes exclusively through the oral cavity; if the soft palate is lowered, however,
air can pass through nose and mouth simultaneously. If the lips are pushed forward and rounded,
a third, labial resonator is formed; if, on the other hand, the lips are spread sideways
or pressed against the teeth, no labial resonator is formed.
UKT: see
Fig0101.
UNIL gave two figures, Figure 1.1 and Figure 4.1, which are the same. |
 |
It is
thus the number of resonators at stake in distinguishing:
• nasal vowels (nasal resonator active) from oral vowels (no nasal
resonance),
• rounded vowels (labial resonator active) from unrounded vowels (no
labial resonator/no labial resonance).
The shape of the oral cavity is determined by the general position of the tongue
in the mouth. This divides the vowels into three great classes (see figure 4.2
below):
• front vowels (tongue body in the pre-palatal region),
• back vowels (tongue body in the post-palatal or velar region),
• central
vowels (tongue body in the medio-palatal region). |
 |
 |
| The size of the oral cavity is the last factor considered in the articulatory
classification of a vowel. The size of the oral cavity depends directly upon the degree
of aperture (of the mouth), that is, upon the distance between the palate and the
tongue's highest point. Arbitrarily, four degrees of aperture are distinguished, from the
most closed (first degree) to the most open (fourth degree). |
 |
 |
The descriptions of the vocalic articulations below are grouped according to the
following principle: an initial classification is made based on degree of aperture; within
each group, the vowels are then divided according to mouth shape (see
Vowel Lip Postures), and then as rounded or unrounded. The study of nasal vowels is, for the meantime, outside the purview of this
page.
UNIL contents |
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by Robert Mannell,
Speech Hearing and Language Research Centre,
Department of Linguistics, © 2000-2004, Macquarie University,
http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonetics/vowelartic/lip_posture.html
UKT: I have included this part because the vowels are also controlled by lip postures.
|
This diagram displays the two extreme lip postures and two intermediate lip postures.
The high front cardinal vowel [ i ] has a
very spread lip posture. The high back cardinal vowel [ u ]
has a very tightly rounded lip posture. The low front cardinal vowel
[ a ] has a spread lip posture but this is a more
neutral posture than for [ i ] because the lower jaw
position for this vowel causes the lips to be more open. The half-open back
cardinal vowel [ ɔ ] has a rounded lip posture but
the lips are more open then for [ u ] because of the
lower jaw position. The actual lip posture for vowels in any particular language may be similar
to that of the closest cardinal vowel with the same lip posture feature, but
often speakers of many languages adopt a more neutral posture than would be
indicated by these cardinal vowels.
|
Approximate lip postures for four vowels |
|
Languages that have lip posture contrasts are more likely to adopt the more extreme lip
posture to emphasise those contrasts. For example, a language with the vowel phonemes
/ i / and / y / (such as French) tend to have a strongly spread / i / and a strongly rounded / y /
to maximise their difference perceptually. Languages without rounding contrasts, such as English,
may relax the degree of rounding of rounded vowels and the degree of spreading of spread
vowels. In English the extent to which this is true varies from dialect to dialect. For example,
Australian English is often described as having rounded vowels which are spoken by many speakers
with less rounding than similar vowels in some other dialects of English. This impression may
be due, however, to the observation that /ʉː/ in Australian English is less rounded
than /uː/ in American English. This difference in degree of rounding may simply be due to
the fact that the American phoneme is a high back vowel and the Australian phoneme is a high
central vowel. There is a tendency for front vowels to be less rounded than back vowels in the
absence of a rounding contrast (although there are exceptions to this tendency).
|
UNIL contents |
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Addenda by U Kyaw Tun
The following table lists the main
Myanmar vowels. The task I am setting myself is to identify the closest English
vowels to the Myanmar vowels. Daw Than Than and myself have come up with the
following list of corresponding or almost corresponding
English vowels after listening to mp3 files downloaded from UNIL and UCLA web-site.
There are two other vowels which have a similar sound to the vowel
{au}:
/ ɒ / UNIL
U0252
UCLA
U0252
/ ɤ / UNIL
U0264
UCLA
U0264
Click on the respective Unicode number and decide for yourself.
UNIL contents |
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First Degree of Aperture -- size of oral cavity:
smallest.
2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL
and UCLA in
the TIL database.
[ ɪ ] -- from UMB (UKT: temporarily included in this group)
<bit> /bɪt/
<miss> /mɪs/
<hid> /hɪ/
UNIL contents |
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2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
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2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
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Second Degree of Aperture -- size
of oral cavity: next to smallest.
2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
Top
1 character
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
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2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
[ ʊ ]
<put> /pʊt/
<hood> /hʊd/
<book> /bʊk/
UNIL contents |
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Third Degree of Aperture -- size
of oral cavity: next to largest.
3 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
[ ɛ ] (U025B) -- small letter open E (Windows XP)
[ ε ] (U03B5) -- Greek letter epsilon (UMB)
note to myself: check with Unicode4
UNIL contents |
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1 character
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
| |
Examples |
Articulation/sound |
Figure |
|
[ ɐ ] |
|
Central vowel
(half-open).(UNIL)
In reality, this vowel falls between the third and fourth degrees of
aperture. This articulation is considered neutral from the point of view of
lip-rounding as well (neither rounded nor unrounded). (UNIL)
|
|
UNIL contents |
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2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
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Fourth Degree of Aperture -- size
of oral cavity: largest.
UKT: Refer to IPA vowel diagram in
02.03 Vowels, and you will
see that there are 4 open vowels:
U0061 [ a ], U0276 [ ɶ ] -- front vowels; and
U0251 [ a ], U0252 [ ɒ ]. -- back vowels
However, UNIL did not include U0276 [ ɶ ] in the open vowels.
1 character
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
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No characters
The IPA does not include any central vowels of this degree of aperture.
UNIL contents |
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2 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UNIL contents |
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There is a large degree of freedom in the articulation of open vowels and it is
certainly possible to imagine vowels even more open than [ ɑ ] (U0251), for example (although
such vowels would probably not be phonologically distinct from the
“standard” open vowels of the fourth degree of aperture.
UKT: Refer to IPA vowel diagram in
02.03 Vowels, and you will
see that there are 4 open vowels:
U0061 [ a ], U0276 [ ɶ ] ; U0251 [ a ], U0252 [ ɒ ]. However, UNIL did not
include U0276 [ ɶ ]
On the other hand, the a vowel could not be much more close than the
“standard” close vowels (first degree of aperture) and still be vocalic, rather
than some kind of spirant
or fricative
consonant, depending on the degree of muscular tension.
Additionally, the close vowels must have a certain minimum duration in order to
be perceived as vocalic rather than consonantal (fricative or spirant).
Semi-vowel is the term for those sounds which, though articulated quite
variously, in one way or another fail to meet these above criteria for full vowel-hood.
UKT: There are 4 Bama continuants used to produce more consonants or
conjuncts:
{ya.},
{ra.},
{wa.}, and
{ha.}. See {ya.pin.} ,
{ra.ris.} ,
{wa.hswθ:} and
{ha.hto:} . Two of
them
{ya.} and {
{wa.} can be considered to be semivowels.
UNIL contents |
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5 characters
UKT:
If you have access to the Internet you can hear each sound by clicking on the
appropriate paragraph title.
By clicking on the Unicode number, you can listen to the mp3 sound files from UNIL in
the TIL database.
UKT: UNIL came to an abrupt end here.
UNIL contents |
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End of TIL file
{a'nan°.} (meaning: smell begin with schwa.
