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bead, deed. The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate is called frequency and this
determines the pitch of the voice. A speech becomes effective with the proper use
of pitch, tone and sound of the word called pronunciation.
The lips also have an important role in articulating the sound. For example the
first sounds in the English language like pill, mill, bill are produced with the lips
closed.
Speech sounds are broadly divided into two categories, vowel sounds and
consonant sounds. Like in the word shoe two sounds follow each other sh and
oe. Sh is produced by friction and oe without friction. During friction air does
not pass freely from the mouth. When we produce sound with the help of friction
such sounds are consonants and when the sound is produced without friction we
have vowel sounds.
Vowel Sounds
There are twenty distinctive vowel sounds in English. For example the words
head and had have different vowel sounds. So they belong to different
phonemes. A Phoneme is defined as a minimal distinctive sound unit of a
language. In English language the 20 distinctive vowel sounds are further subdivided. 12 are pure vowel sounds, monophthongs and 8 vowel sounds glide or
have two sounds combined known as dipthongs.
The following list shows the different vowel sounds
Consonant Sounds
There are twenty four distinctive consonant sounds in English produced by friction
in the mouth cavity. As shown in the following table.