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American English pronunciation of "no highway cowboys" /noʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/, showing five diphthongs: / oʊ, aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ / A diphthong (/ ˈ d ɪ f θ ɒ ŋ, ˈ d ɪ p-/ DIF-thong, DIP-; [1] from Ancient Greek δίφθογγος (díphthongos) 'two sounds', from δίς (dís) 'twice' and φθόγγος (phthóngos) 'sound'), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is ...
In Western Australian English, there is a tendency for centring diphthongs to be pronounced as full diphthongs. Those in the eastern states will tend to pronounce "fear" and "sheer" without any jaw movement, while the westerners would pronounce them like "fia" and "shia", respectively, which slightly resembles South African English but in a ...
Although the Old English diphthongs merged into monophthongs, Middle English began to develop a new set of diphthongs.Many of these came about through vocalization of the palatal approximant /j/ (usually from an earlier /ʝ/) or the labio-velar approximant /w/ (sometimes from an earlier voiced velar fricative [ɣ]), when they followed a vowel.
Late Old English (Anglian) Early Middle English Late Middle English Early Modern English Modern English Example (Old and Modern English forms given) [1] æġ, ǣġ
For example, vowels were often lengthened in late Old English before /ld/, /nd/, /mb/, and vowels changed in complex ways before /r/ throughout the history of English. Vowels were diphthongized in Middle English before /h/ , and new diphthongs arose in Middle English by the combination of vowels with Old English w , g /ɣ/ → /w/ , and ġ /j/ .
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
This table omits the history of Middle English diphthongs; see that link for a table summarizing the developments. The table is organized around the pronunciation of Late Middle English c. 1400 AD (the time of Chaucer) and the modern spelling system, which dates from the same time and closely approximates the pronunciation of the time.
The dictionary uses a broad transcription rather than a narrow one. For example, the long o vowel of "toe", which is a diphthong in open syllables in most American accents, is represented by the single symbol o , rather than oʊ as it would be represented in a narrow transcription.