English Sound System In an overview of the English sound system, its alphabet is based on Latin which contains twenty

six letters: twenty- four consonants; twelve vowels; eight diphthongs and a total of 44 phonemes. Consonants The classification of English consonants according to place of articulation (horizontal column) and manner of articulation (vertical column) is given in Table below: TABLE As shown in Table, of the six plosives /p,b,t,d,k,g/in the horizontal column, /p,t,k/ are voiceless; aspirated initially and medially before a stressed vowel in syllable-initial position and un-aspirated finally; medially after /s/ as in spy, sty, and sky, and before unstressed vowels. /k/and /g/,voiceless and voiced, are slightly palatalized before front vowels. /t/ and /d/, voiceless and voiced, have dental-alveolar articulation; moreover, /t/and /d/have un-aspirated flaps inter-vocalically after a stressed syllable as in footy and kidding. In fact, /t/and/d/in these words have voiced flaps, resembling /r/Another observation is that English has nine fricatives as follows: /f, v, , , h, s, z, , /.The first five /f, v, , , h/are plain and the rest are complex; moreover, /v, , z,/are voiced and the rest are voiceless. In addition, /s/and /z/have alveolar articulation. Table also shows that there are three nasals /m, n, /in the English consonantal system which are categorized as plain voiced nasals. /m/is bilabial; /n/has dental-alveolar articulation, and // as a velar occurs finally as in ring /ri /. There are also two affricates // and // which are voiceless and voiced respectively and have post alveolar articulation. Furthermore, the phoneme /r/along with /j/and/w/are considered as approximant which are complex; /j/has palatal, and /w/has velar articulation. Example of words for six plosive consonants sounds are /p/ as in /pit/, /b/ as in /bit/, /t/ as in /tin/, /d/ as in /din/, /k/ as in /cut/, and /g/ as in /gut/. There are nine fricatives sounds which are /f/ as in /fat/, /v/ as in /vat/, / / as in /thin/, / / as in /then/, /h/ as in /ham/, /s/ as in /sap/, /z/ as in /zap/, // as in /she/ and // as in /measure/. Moreover, there are three nasal sounds which are /m/ as in /map/, /n/ as in /nap/ and / / as in /bang/. The two affricates in English are // as in /cheap/ and // as in /jeep/. Furthermore, the approximant sounds are /r/ as in /run/, /j/ as in /yes/ and /w/ as in /we/.

Vowel TABLE As shown in Table 6, of the eleven English vowels, /i,e,u, /are high; /I, ,o/ are mid, and / ,,/are low; moreover, /I,e, ,u,o/ are tense, whilst all others are lax. It should also be pointed out that English does have variation in vowel length; therefore, there are

two major types of vowels (long and short) on the basis of their length. Long vowels are usually noticeable from short vowels in the duration of time that speakers spend in articulating them. In English, there are four long vowels /I,u,o, / and seven short vowels /e, , , , ,I, /which lack the length features. Examples for vowel sounds are/I/ as in /bid/, /u/ as in /tune/, /o/ as in /old/, // as in /bed/, /e/ as in /bay/, // as in /father/, // as in /bat/, // as in /bud/, // as in /bar/, /i/ as in /happy/ and / / as in /book/. Diphthongs A diphthong is also known as a gliding vowel refers to two occurring of two vowel sounds within the same syllable. Diphthong contains two letters, whereby it represents the beginning and ending position of the tongue. There are eight diphthongs in English language: /el/ - face, raise, amazing, straight, hate, baby, paper, array, later, neighbour, feign, bouquet /aI/ - fine, behind, child, line, kind, silent, maelstrom, aisle, ally, eye, I, my, light, guy, guide /l/ - choice, boy, toy, coy /l/ - fear, hear, ear, beer, behemoth, weir, mere, subsidiary, pianist, area, diarrhoea /e/ - square, bear, pair, hair // - truer, sewer, bluer, doer, dual, jewel, tour, poor // - goat, coat, boat, cold, stole, bowl, old, home, comb, roll, toe, no, go, though, slow /a/ - foul, about, house, flower, out, how, now, allow, plough, ouch! The first three diphthongs, which are /aI/, /el/and /l/ have the /I/ vowel sound in its finishing position. The following three diphthongs, which are /l/, /e/ and // have the 'shwa' vowel sound // in the finishing position. The diphthongs // and /a/ have the back vowel // in the ending position. English SYLLABLES Structures Words are made up from sequence of speech sounds (units) which are called as syllables. Each word in English contains at least one syllable. There are few types of syllables. A word which has a single syllable is called a monosyllable. Two syllable words are called disyllable and three word syllables are called trisyllable. Word which has more than four syllable or even word which has more then one syllable are referred to as polysyllable. A syllable which ends with consonant are called a closed syllable, where else, it is called an open syllable if it ends with a vowel. This syllables pattern can be shown with C (consonant) and V (vowel). CVC referred to closed syllable, while CV is shown for open syllables.