Chapter 3: Vowel contrasts
The 5 basic vowels
Many languages use just 5 vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. (See the IPA reference post.) These vowels are not pronounced identically in the different languages, but they are approximately the same.
For example, Spanish, Hawaiian, Swahili and Japanese.
Regional variation
These languages don't really have regional forms (Spanish differs mostly in the consonants), whereas English is harder to describe because the differences between dialects are mostly in the vowels.
Most people in the world are bilingual, but most English speakers aren't. However, we are usually bi-dialectal: we speak our own dialect at home, and a 'standard' form to people of other dialects.
English vowels
General American English has 14 or 15 vowels (that are pronounced as different sounds, not 14 or 15 different spellings). See the IPA reference post for Standard Southern British English vowels.
American English contains ɚ, in words like 'bird'. This is a very rare vowel sound among the world's languages (proof that weird sounds do not stop a language being widely spoken!)
This part of the book basically lists the different vowels, and gives examples of words in which they occur, and where there are differences between British and American English. Look for IPA charts for different dialects on Wikipedia if you are interested. (This is a good shortcut to imitating an accent, if you are bad at imitating what you hear, but have an analytical mind.)
This part of the book basically lists the different vowels, and gives examples of words in which they occur, and where there are differences between British and American English. Look for IPA charts for different dialects on Wikipedia if you are interested. (This is a good shortcut to imitating an accent, if you are bad at imitating what you hear, but have an analytical mind.)