SPEECH

ARTICULATION 3.
Diphthongs

David Brett

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 While the position of the tongue is
more or less stable for a pure
vowel…

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 … a diphthong is characterised by a
graceful movement from one point to
another, for this reason they are also
sometimes known as glides.

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 This is also visible on a spectrogram: this is the
pure vowel /a/…

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 …and this is the diphthong / /. Notice how the
formants (the dark bands) seperate towards the
end.

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 English diphthongs may cause Italian speakers
difficulty for two main reasons:

• Italian has four diphthongs (I think!) while

English has eight. All the Italian
diphthongs have equivalents in English
which are not the same but which are
reasonably similar
• Nowhere is the English spelling system
more bizarre than in its representation of
diphthongs

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 If one has a clear idea of where pure
vowels are articulated on the
quadrilateral then interpreting the
diphthong symbols is not difficult.

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 Technically, English diphthongs are divided into
two groups:

• Closing diphthongs – which tend to move

from an open to a close position, these
roughly correspond to Italian sounds
• Centring diphthongs – which tend towards
a central position ( /  )

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 First we will look at the closing group…

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 … the ‘pay’, ‘ made’, ‘maid’, ‘reign’, ‘obey’, sound:

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Then we have the ‘I’, ‘my’, ‘tie’, ‘sigh’, ‘either’, ‘eye’,
‘Thai’, sound:

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 Then there is ‘boy’, ‘choice’:

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 Then ‘down’, ‘loud’:

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 To end the closing group, the most
common diphthong in English, that of ‘no’,
‘know’,‘bone’, ‘foam’, ‘sew’, ‘though’,
‘don’t’, ‘foe’, ‘crow’:

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 To start with the centring group, we have the most
common, that of ‘clear’, ‘deer’, ‘here’, ‘wier’:

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 Then ‘air’, ‘where’, wear’, ‘care’, ‘heir’:

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Finally, there is a diphthong which is quite rare and
is often realised as / :/ - ‘tour’, ‘poor’:

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 Similar to pure vowels, the acoustic
qualities (formants 1 and 2) of
diphthongs may be plotted on a
graph similar to the quadrilateral…

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 … this is an elaborated plot of inverted values of
F1 against F2 of the diphthong / /.

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 One or two final considerations:

• Although the symbols indicating pure

vowels and the starting and closing points
of diphthongs are often the same they do
not necessarily correspond to the same
points
• Lip rounding is another variable, generally
associated with back vowels

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 Finally:

• Diphthongs are the element in a language

which are most liable to change. The
majority of the characteristics of a given
accent are usually to be found in this area,
so understanding of the underlying
mechanics is vital if one wants to
understand accents and accent change.

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