Diphthongs

Hello. This video is about diphthongs. Diphthongs are a specific type of vowel sound. If we look at the word diphthong itself, it’s going to help us to figure out what we’re looking at. So, di, meaning two, and phthong meaning sound or tone. This is borrowed from Greek. So to make a diphthong, you, your mouth has to move from one position to another. Wait a minute: Isn’t that two vowels? No, it’s not. Let me give you an example. “I” which is one letter – it’s also a word, but think about it: when you start, your mouth is open and by the time you’re finished, your mouth is more closed. I I if I just left my mouth wide open – uh – I would never finish saying it. I. So this is how we would write this, with two symbols. I So this is an example of a diphthong. We’ll come back to this specific one later. Right now we’re going to look at oi. We’ll start when this happens before a voiceless consonant: boisterous Joyce oysters voice loiter moist Gator, and before a voiced consonant: spoil boy destroy toy avoid noisy enjoy. And actually, I know I said “before a voiced consonant” I should have said “before a voiced consonant or at the end of the word” because when the sound comes at the end of the word, it stretches out just like it does when it comes before a voiced consonant. Let’s look at some example sentences: The spoiled boy destroys his toys. They avoided boisterous Boyd and noisy Joyce. Okay, the next one I. I only comes before a voiceless consonant, so that’s why there’s only one column here: light bike life wipe quite wife price. We’ll look at some sentences: The price hike was not nice. The wife’s mice were quite light. Now we’re going to look at another diphthong that comes in a different position. These ones come before, only before a voiced consonant: rye pile lie – or at the end of a word – high fine pine lime. The rye pile lies high. This is a fine pine lime. Now we’re going to look at those two together. I’ll go through one list again: wife price light. Now look at the other when it comes before a voiced sound: wives prize lied. Okay? Can you hear the difference? Because it is there. I’ll go through the list again but this time I’ll do one on the left and then the one on the right: wife wives price prize light lied, okay? So there’s a small difference. My English ear hears the difference though, so if you can get yourself to the point where you can hear this, that’s great! The next pair that we’re going to look at is similar, so this sound ow only comes before a voiceless consonant. house coach shout spout out mouth voucher. Let’s look at some sentences: He sat in his house, on his couch, and shouted. She kept a mouse in her pouch. Now let’s look at what happens when we put it before a voiced consonant: crowd arouse clown round tower brown flower. Let’s look at some sentences: The crowd was aroused by the clown. The round tower had brown flowers. So you might be thinking to yourself: wait a minute, that’s the same symbol. How is this different? Let’s take a look. So once again, before a voiceless consonant: house mouth about. Before a voiced consonant: houses mouths around. So, can you hear the difference? Again, I’ll do left side and then right side: house houses mouth mouths about around. Okay that’s all I have for today. Thank you very much for watching. If you like some practice, look below the video!