You heard me correctly!

There are actually 20 different vowel sounds

in British English.

But how can that be right?

a e i o u and maybe y

that's six

How can there be twenty?

Well, you're right.

There are a maximum of six vowels in our writing system

but this is just for spelling.

When we're speaking

we use a maximum of 20 different vowel sounds.

The 20 vowel sounds in British English are split into three different categories.

Short, long and dipthong.

Today, I'm going to show you all of the vowels in British English

and teach you a little bit about the categories.

Wait, wait, wait! 0:01:08.667,1193:02:47.295 and diphthong.

Before all that, I need to teach you about the most important tool we have

when we describe the sounds in any language or any accent

The IPA

or in other words

the International Phonetic Alphabet.

It's a kind of special alphabet where each letter or phoneme represents a different sound.

Some phonemes look just like English

for example b

but some look different like ʃ

or the very confusing j

Today, we'll be using these symbols or phonemes to describe the sounds in each category.

Let's get started!

Short vowels are pretty self-explanatory.

They are vowels that have a short sound.

We have seven short vowels in British English.

/æ/ as in ant

/e/ as in egg

/ɪ/ as in injure

/ɒ/ as in October

/ʌ/ as in under

/ʊ/ as in put

and /ə/ as in amazing

'put' and 'under' have the same vowel.

They both have a 'u'

But the sound in each word is completely different

'under'

'put'

So you can see how there can be many different vowel sounds

but only six actual letters in the English alphabet.

Long vowels, of course, sound longer

and we can tell that they are long vowels

because the phonemes have this symbol next to them.

Let's look at some long vowels.

We have /ɑː/ as in dark

/ɜː/ as in early

/ɔː/ as in or

/uː/ as in chew

and /iː/ as in sheep

In particular, please make sure that you make a long enough vowel sound.

It can be the difference between sheep and ship

or worse sheet and sh*t.

You know

Okay. This final category contains some of the harder vowels to make in English.

Why?

Because you have to make two sounds in one.

For example, /eɪ/ is a combination of /e/ and /ɪ/

used in words like 'able'

We also have /aɪ/ as in ice cream

/oʊ/ as in over

/aʊ/ as in out

/ɔɪ/ as in boy

/eə/ as in care

/ɪə/ as in ear

and /ʊə/ as in tour

In total, we have eight diphthongs

but the last one /ʊə/ isn't really used much anymore.

In other words, we don't tend to say 'tour' anymore.

We choose the simpler way 'tour'.

Same as 'cure'.

We usually just say 'cure'.

I hope you enjoyed this short video on vowel sounds in English.

If you like this video,

watch out for some pronunciation videos that should be coming soon.

Goodbye!

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