Diphthong Sounds; Remember, pronunciation is physical (2024)

• August 19, 2014

This video is a quick reminder that pronunciation in English is physical. Here is how that applies to the Diphthong sounds.

Diphthong Sounds

Hi there, this is a quick video from our YouTube channel to look atthe diphthong sounds. Remember pronunciation is physical and the important thing to remember with the diphthongsis that they are two sounds combined. So the position of your mouth and tongue and the shape of your lips will change as you say the sound.

Lets look at the vowels again so you can see what I mean.

The diphthongs are arranged according to the second sound. On the left column are the sounds that end with /ə/. In the middle column are the sounds that end with /ɪ/. And on the right are the sounds that end with /ʊ/.

1. First of all we have /ɪə/ starting on /ɪ/ and finishing on /ə/.
2. Then we have /ʊə/ starting with the /ʊ/ and finishing on the /ə/sound.
3. And the last symbol on the left column is/eə/.Starting on the /e/ and finishing on the /ə/.

In the second column sounds end with /ɪ/or /iː/ depending on the word.

1. At the top we have /eɪ/. Starting on the/e/ and finishing on the /ɪ/.
2. Then we have /ɔɪ/ starting on the /ɔ:/and finishing on the /ɪ/.
3. At the bottom we have /aɪ/ starting on the/a/and finishing on the /ɪ/.

Then in the final column we have two sounds.

1. The first is /əʊ/ starting with /ə/ and finishing on the /ʊ/.
2. And finally we have /aʊ/ starting on the/a/ and finishing on the /ʊ/.

So those are the diphthong sounds. We have also made videos on the other groups of sounds, Vowels, Single Consonants, and Consonant Pairs. As well as that we have made a video on each of the individual phonemes which you can find in the menu at the top of this page.

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