CARRERA: PROFESORADO UNIVERSITARIO DE INGLÉS

ESPACIO CURRICULAR: FONÉTICA Y DICCIÓN I

CURSADA: ANUAL
HORAS SEMANALES: TRES
PROFESORES: GRACIELA HEIT
MALVINA MASSARO
NICOLÁS VINCENTI
CICLO LECTIVO: 2024

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

THEORY ——————————> P. 3

PRACTICE ——————————> P. 71

RESOURCES ——————————> P. 95

References
- Ashton, H. & Shepherd, S. (2012). Work on your Accent. Collins.
- Sobek, S. (2016). Exploring Phonetics and Pronunciation. CTPCBA.
- Zabala, F. & David, J. C. (2008). Phonetics I.

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THEORY

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 WHAT ACCENT WILL I LEARN?
The variety we’re dealing with is certainly not spoken
by most people in the UK, but it’s understood there
and beyond. It used to be known as Received
Pronunciation (RP)1, but that term is falling out of use,
mainly because 1) the accent has changed and 2)
because it seems that the use of the word “received”
implies that other accents would not be acceptable,
and that’s not the kind of attitude we’d like to encourage.

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Image source: https://learntalk.org/en/blog/different-english-accents-from-around-the-world
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For these reasons, other names have arisen. General British is a term very much used nowadays, but it also comes
with certain implications. In fact, geographically speaking, you’ll find speakers of this variety in the south of
England. How can it, then, be called general if its location is quite specific? That’s why many authors prefer calling
it Standard Southern British English (SSBE). If you want to access online material for listening purposes, it’s highly
suggested that you check the BBC. For this reason, another common name for this accent is BBC English.

It’s also important that you understand what the accent in this book will tell people about you. SSBE is socially
associated with the middle class or people in professional positions. We choose this accent because it’s the usual
pronunciation in standard English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in the UK and in most places around the
world.

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 HOW TO PRODUCE SOUNDS
The FLEECE vowel /iː/

The KIT vowel /ɪ/

The TRAP vowel /æ/

The LOT vowel /ɒ/

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The NORTH vowel /ɔː/

The STRUT vowel /ʌ/

SCHWA /ə/

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The GOAT vowel /əʊ/

The voiced bilabial plosive /b/

The voiced labiodental fricative /v/

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The voiceless dental fricative /θ/, the voiceless alveolar
plosive /t/ and the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/

The voiced dental fricative /ð/, the voiced alveolar plosive

/d/ and the voiced alveolar fricative /z/

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The voiced alveolar nasal /n/ and the voiced velar nasal /ŋ/

The voiceless glottal fricative /h/

The voiced postalveolar approximant /r/

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The voiced labial-velar approximant /w/

The voiced alveolar lateral approximant /l/

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SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION

Key

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19
20
Key

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Key

22
Key

23
Key

24
Key

25
Key

26
27
28
Key

29
30
Key

31
Key

32
Silent letters

Key

33
Key

34
Key

35
Key

36
Key

37
Key

38
Key

Key

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40
41
Key

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Key

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44
 Key

Key

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Key

Key

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Key

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48
49
Key

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51
52
Key

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54
55
Key

Key

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Key

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Key

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 DEVOICING OF CONSONANTS

1. Devoicing is a kind of regressive assimilation. It affects the vibration of the vocal cords in
voiced sounds. Stress does not count here.
When it happens, a voiced consonant loses its voicing either partially or completely. The
diacritic used for this process is [ ̥ ]
There are many cases of devoicing but, in this course, we’ll only focus on the following two:

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Key

60
Key

61
Key

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63
Key

64
Key

65
Key

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67
Key

68
Key

69
Key

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PRACTICE

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PRACTICE 1

Key

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PRACTICE 2

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 Key

PRACTICE 3

Key

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PRACTICE 4

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Key

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PRACTICE 5

Key

PRACTICE 6

Key

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PRACTICE 7

Key

PRACTICE 8

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Key

Key

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PRACTICE 9

Key

PRACTICE 10

Key

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PRACTICE 11

Key

PRACTICE 12

Key

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PRACTICE 13

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 Key

PRACTICE 14

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 Key

PRACTICE 15

Key

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PRACTICE 16

Key

PRACTICE 17

Key

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PRACTICE 18

Key

PRACTICE 19

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 Key

PRACTICE 20

Key

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PRACTICE 21

Key

PRACTICE 22

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 Key

PRACTICE 23

Key

PRACTICE 24

Key

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PRACTICE 25

Key

PRACTICE 26

Key

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PRACTICE 27

Key

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PRACTICE 28

Key

PRACTICE 29

Key

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PRACTICE 30

Key

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PRACTICE 31

Key

PRACTICE 32

Key

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RESOURCES

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Organs of Speech

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Phonemic Chart

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Vowel Chart + Lexical Set

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TRADITIONAL VOWEL CHART (RP)

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 Anticlockwise vowel chain shift

Southern Standard British English Vowels

(as proposed by Lindsey)

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 VOWELS (PURE VOWELS & DIPHTHONGS)

N° PHONEME NAME TYPICAL EXAMPLES UNUSUAL SPELLING

SPELLING

1 /iː/ FLEECE <ee>; <ea>, cheese, meat, field, machine, key,

<ee> even police, people,
kiosk
2 /ɪ/ KIT <i> ring English, women,
eleven, busy,
enjoy, sieve
3 /e/2 DRESS <e> bed any, friend, said,
bread, head
4 /æ/3 TRAP <a> hand plaid, plait
5 /ɑː/ START <ar>; <a>, bar, bath, calm heart, laugh, aunt
<al>
6 /ɒ/ LOT <o> pot watch, yacht,
wash, because,
warrior
7 /ɔː/ NORTH <or>; <al>, door, all, saw, water, warm, four,
<aw>, <au> author thought, fought
8 /ʊ/ FOOT <u>; <oo> bull, good could, should,
would, woman
9 /uː/ GOOSE <oo>; <u>, fool, rule, chew move, do, shoe,
<ew> juice, fruit
10 /ʌ/ STRUT <u> cut wonder, does,
done, young,
mother, won
11 /ɜː/ NURSE <er>; <ir>, verb, girl, turn work, world, earth,
<ur> worse, earn, pearl,
colonel
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You’ll also find /e/ as /ɛ/
3
You’ll also find /æ/ as /a/.
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 12 /ə/ commA UNSTRESSED alone, teacher,
(SCHWA) SYLLABLES fashion, doctor,
cactus
- /aʊ/ MOUTH <ou>; <ow> cloud, cow
- /əʊ/ GOAT <o>; <oa> go, boat low, grow,
shoulder, Joe, sew,
dough
- /aɪ/ PRICE <i>; <y>, like, spy, high, buy, bye
<igh>, <ie> die
- /eɪ/ FACE <a>; <ai>, age, straight, day grey, they, break,
<ay> steak, eight
- /ɔɪ/ CHOICE <oi>; <oy> join, toy buoy
- /ɪə/ NEAR <eer>; <ear>, beer, hear, here barrier, courier
<ere>
- /eə/4 SQUARE <air>; <are> chair, share Mary, swear,
various, Sarah,
pear, where,
aeroplane
- /ʊə/ CURE <ure> sure poor, tour

ARCHEPHONEMES

N° PHONEME NAME TYPICAL EXAMPLES

SPELLING

1 /i/ happY <y>, <e> sorry, anybody, he, she

2 /u/ thank <ou>, <o> you, to, do, who
yOU

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You’ll also find /eə/ as /ɛː/
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 CONSONANTS

PHONEME CLASSIFICATION (VPM) TYPICAL EXAMPLES UNUSUAL SPELLING

SPELLING

/p/ voiceless bilabial plosive <p>; port,

<pp> disappear
/b/ voiced bilabial plosive <b>; boy, bubble
<bb>
/t/ voiceless alveolar plosive <t>; <tt> tea, better
/d/ voiced alveolar plosive <d>; day, middle
<dd>
/k/ voiceless velar plosive <c>; catch, dark, character,
<k>, snack architect,
<ck> chemical, Celtic
/g/ voiced velar plosive <g>; goat, jogging exact
<gg>
/ʧ/ voiceless postalveolar <ch>; chair, catch, exhaustion
affricate <tch>, mature
<ture>
/ʤ/ voiced postalveolar <j>; join, judge generous,
affricate <dge> manager,
gesture
/f/ voiceless labiodental <f>, <ff> fate, coffee laugh, cough,
fricative rough, photo,
lieutenant
/v/ voiced labiodental <v> view of
fricative
/θ/ voiceless dental fricative <th> think
/ð/ voiced dental fricative <th> brother
/s/ voiceless alveolar <s>; sorry, stress, niece, scent

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 fricative <ss>; city
<c>
/z/ voiced alveolar fricative <z>; <s> zebra, loves
(after voiced
sound if the
<s> is a suffix)
/ʃ/ voiceless postalveolar <sh>; cash, action, ocean
fricative <ti/ci> special
/ʒ/ voiced postalveolar <age>; massage, rouge, usually
fricative <sure>, pleasure,
<sion> precision
/h/ voiceless glottal fricative <h> hope
/m/ voiced bilabial nasal <m>; meal, comma
<mm>
/n/ voiced alveolar nasal <n>; note, tennis knit, knee,
<nn> knife, know,
knock
/ŋ/ voiced velar nasal <ng>; ring, thanks
<nk>
/l/ voiced alveolar lateral <l>; <ll> lie, call
approximant
/r/ voiced postalveolar <r>; <rr> rapid, carrot wrong, wrath,
approximant write
/j/ voiced palatal <y> yes
approximant
/w/ voiced labial-velar <w>; wave, why one, queen,
approximant <wh> quite

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 THE PRONUNCIATION DICTIONARY
In this course, we encourage students to use two pronunciation dictionaries. The
first one is the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Its last edition was published
in 2008 and you can download the software included in it by accessing this link.
In order to use it, you have to download the whole folder onto your computer,
unzip the file and click on the file named “lpd.exe”. We highly encourage you to
explore all of this dictionary’s features. However, we’ll deal with the most
important ones in the activities below.

The second dictionary we suggest you use is Geoff Lindsey’s CUBE dictionary.
First, let’s read what he proposes:

SSB: the default accent of CUBE5

CUBE stands for ‘CUrrent British English’. CUBE’s search results always include a phonetic transcription, in blue,
which the editors consider a representative pronunciation of the word in contemporary ‘Standard Southern British’
(SSB). This kind of English may be thought of as characteristic of university-educated young adults from the south of
England. It is heard from a majority of presenters and correspondents in British news broadcasting. Clearly it is not
a majority accent in the UK (so the term ‘General British’ used by some publishers is misleading). But English
speakers around the world are familiar with it — it is often heard in Hollywood films, for example — and
internationally it is associated with Britain.

Many sources, including the Cambridge, Collins, and Longman dictionaries, still use for their British English
transcriptions a set of vowel symbols which was chosen by A. C. Gimson more than half a century ago to describe
explicitly the upper class speech of the period before the tumultuous social changes of the 1960s: classic Received
Pronunciation (RP).

This Gimsonian transcription does not give an explicit indication of 21st century SSB. In fact, if its vowel symbols are
pronounced with the explicit values of the International Phonetic Alphabet, the result is an accent which now
sounds to native speakers old-fashioned, ‘posh’ and even amusing. Unfortunately publishers and authors typically
fail to make this discrepancy clear to their readers, who often take the symbols more literally than is now
appropriate. (Another problem with the Gimsonian vowel symbols is that they make the wrong groupings. For
example, the vowels which Gimson chose to write with the IPA length symbol /ː/ no longer constitute — if they ever
did — any kind of true phonetic or phonological grouping.)

Because this rather inaccurate and misleading old system is still so widely used, CUBE includes the option to display
it (in black) by ticking the box ‘trad’ under SYSTEMS. We hope that you find it useful to compare it with our more
accurate transcription in blue.

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Source: http://seas.elte.hu/cube/accent.html
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Here are some practical guidelines on how to use this online dictionary. First you’ll type http://cubedictionary.org/
on your browser (or just click here). Once in the website, make sure you tick the “trad” box in the “SYSTEMS”
section and the box “full word”, provided that you’re looking for a specific word:

Then, type the word you want to look up. When typing <phonetics>, this is the result:

The result in blue shows the contemporary and most accurate transcription of the chosen word. Next to it, you
have the traditional transcription of the same word. We will follow that system since it’s the most spread in the
teaching field. However, it’s very important that you get familiar with the new trends since they will soon become
the mainstream way of teaching pronunciation. If you want to know more about the CUBE dictionary, you can
check this video where Geoff Lindsey himself explains how to use it. Last but not least, notice that you can also
click on the play button so as to listen to the chosen word being pronounced by different speakers in the website
YouGlish. This is also a very interesting resource since it shows you words being pronounced in different contexts
out of real situations, and not a recording made for the exclusive purpose of creating a dictionary.

ACTIVITY 1: Download the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Look up the following words: total, sudden, fire,
twenty, afternoon, last, play. Pay attention to the following:

a. Raised symbols like [ ᵊ ], [ᵐ] or [ᵇ]

b. Symbols in italics like [ t ]
c. The symbols ◂ and §
d. Conjugations

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ACTIVITY CHECKING: Check the keys to activity 16.

ACTIVITY 2: Use the CUBE dictionary to look up the following words: girl, green, dentist, microscope, scared.
Check the contemporary transcription and the traditional one so as to complete the following chart:

VOWEL TRADITIONAL VOWEL SYMBOL CONTEMPORARY VOWEL SYMBOL

FLEECE /iː/

DRESS /e/

NURSE / ɜː/

PRICE /aɪ/

GOAT /əʊ/

SQUARE /eə/7

Activity 3: What about stress? How is it represented in the CUBE dictionary?8

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Key to Activity 1: a. Raised symbols represent sounds that can be optionally inserted; b. Symbols in italics represent sounds
sometimes optionally omitted; c. The symbol ◂ signals the possibility of stress shift, whereas the symbol § is used to offer
alternative pronunciations to the standard which are widely used; d. Conjugations are shown below the word that triggers
any type of conjugation.
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Key to Activity 2: FLEECE /ɪj/, DRESS /ɛ/, NURSE /əː/, PRICE /ɑj/, GOAT /əw/, SQUARE /ɛː/
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Key to Activity 3: it follows a similar tradition to the one in Spanish, where we have a written accent or what we call <tilde>
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