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A monophthong is a single vowel sound.
The word monophthong comes from the Greek “mono”, which means “one”, and “-phthong”, which means “tone” or “sound”. So monophthong means “one sound” or “single sound”.
Monophthongs are sometimes called pure vowels.
There are 12 monophthongs in English:
Table of the 12 monophthongs - Wikimedia commons
Long monophthongs are vowels with long pronunciation. There are 5 long vowels:
Short monophthongs are vowels with a 'short' sound, which means that they are not extended sounds. Compare the vowel sound in eat and sit for example. The first is long and the second is short. There are 7 short vowels:
Try pronouncing a couple of words in the lists above while looking in the mirror. Focus on the way you move your mouth and the position of your tongue. Try pronouncing heat, hit, hat, and hot. Notice how the movement of the mouth changes, from a spread position to a rounded one.
Other than the transcription, a good way of telling monophthongs and diphthongs apart comes from the pronunciation. When pronouncing a diphthong, your mouth should create two distinct shapes without closing. For example, when pronouncing the word beer, your mouth should change from a spread shape to an open shape.
The differences between monophthongs and diphthongs are:
Examples of monophthongs are the [ə] in about, [ʌ] in one, and [ʊ] in put.
There are twelve monophthongs in English.
Monophthongs can be pronounced differently based on the movement of the tongue and the position of the lips. For example, the monophthong [ɪ] is pronounced in the front-central part of the vocal tract, with the lips half closed and in a spread position.
A monophthong is when there is only one vowel sound in a syllable. A diphthong is a combination of two vowel sounds together.
A monophthong is a single vowel sound.
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