Practice question · True or false
The consonant inventories of English accents differ far less than their vowel inventories.
Hints
- Compare the number of well-known consonant differences with the vowel ones.
- Trap–bath, cot–caught and foot–strut are all vowel phenomena.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Accents of English are told apart overwhelmingly by their vowels; rhoticity and glottalling aside, the consonant systems are nearly identical. It is why the vowels take two lessons in this unit and why transcription practice concentrates on them.
Practise English Vowels I: the Quadrilateral
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More questions on English Vowels I: the Quadrilateral
- Why are vowels described by tongue position rather than by place of articulation?
- Phonetic vowel length depends on both lexical vowel category and the following consonant. What follows from…
- Daniel Jones's cardinal vowels are the vowels of Received Pronunciation.
- Sort each accent feature by whether it is a MERGER or a SPLIT.
- How many monophthongs does the standard analysis of Received Pronunciation recognise?
- Which are true of vowel length in English?
- Match each dimension of vowel description to what it specifies.
- Complete the description of the vowel space.
- Arrange these vowels from the highest tongue position to the lowest.