If you’re like most English-speakers, you’re an English-reader, and you think that English has five, sometimes six, vowels — a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y — because the English alphabet has five, sometimes six, vowels.
But if you look at how dictionaries “respell” English words for pronunciation, you quickly realize that English — even if we look only at a single dialect, like General American English — has many, many vowels — including not just monophthongs, or pure vowels, but diphthongs and triphthongs composed of multiple vowel sounds.
| International Phonetic Alphabet | Examples |
|---|---|
| æ | pat, lad, cat, ran |
| e? | pay, day |
| ??r | care, hair, there |
| ?? | father, palm |
| ?r | arm |
| ? | let, head |
| i? | bee, see |
| ? | pit, city |
| a? | pie, by, my |
| ??r | pier, near, here |
| ? | pot, not, wasp |
| o? | toe, no |
| ?? | caught, paw, war |
| ?? | noise, boy |
| ? | took, put |
| ??r | tour |
| u? | boot, soon, through |
| a? | out, now |
| ? | cut, run, enough |
| ?r | urge, term, firm, word, heard, bird |
| ? | about, item, edible, gallop, circus |
| ?r | butter, winner |
| ju? | pupil |
| ø, œ | feu, oeuf (French), schön, zwölf (German) |
| y | tu (French), über (German) |
| y?, ? | bon (French) |
Looking at all those crazy IPA spellings is enough to make you feel like a ghoti out of water.