Online Native British English Teacher

Organs of Speech

There are five organs of speech

• The tongue
• The lips
• The teeth
• The soft palate
• The hard palate

As the sound enters the mouth these organs of speech alter the sound.

The tongue is the only muscle in the body connected directly to a bone, it can move in and out, from side to side, it can twist and can move very quickly.

The lips can be moved forwards and backwards and can change the shape of the mouth.

The teeth cannot move but are used in conjunction with the lips and tongue. We notice the importance of teeth when we listen to young children who are waiting for the tooth fairy to arrive or to more elderly people whose teeth have unfortunately not managed to reach such an old age as they have!

The soft palate is the back of the roof of the mouth. It can be lowered or raised for differing sounds.

The hard palate is the front of the roof of the mouth and cannot move. It is the bony bit near the teeth and like the teeth it is used in conjunction with the tongue.

Try saying these two simple words: AT ALL

These two little words represent four sounds and the tongue moves so quickly to produce four sounds that we don’t notice. We have ‘a’ as in cat, ‘t’ as in tuh, ‘aw’ as in crawl and ‘l’ as in luh.

Vowels

It is very often the vowel sounds in english that anyone learning english as a foreign language have trouble with.

Speech sounds are either vowel sounds or consonant sounds.

When learning to speak englih as a foreign language you need to remember that we have 5 vowel signs from which we get about 26 sounds.

For example, take the vowel sign ‘a’, now imagine its sound in the following words, car, cat and way.

Each sound is different and it is the sound that is important when speaking english as a foreign language not the name of the letter.

The breath for vowel sounds comes up through the vocal cords and straight out through the mouth. The different sounds are made by altering the positions of the tongue and lips. Note that for these vowel sounds the organs of speech never touch each other. The teeth shouldn’t touch the lips, the tongue shouldn’t touch the hard palate and the lips don’t touch each other. Sometimes the tongue may rest behind the bottom teeth although technically it shouldn’t.

These vowel soounds are classified as follows:

Monophthongs

These are sounds made with the mouth in one position only.

If the position of the lips and tongue do not alter during the sound it is a monophthong. An example is ‘ee’. Once the sound has been started the mouth stays in the same position.

There are open and shut (or short and long) monophthongs.

SHORT – That pen is not much good.

The sound is what you’re after.

OPEN - Heat soon forms firm plants.

Diphthongs

If the position of the lips and tongue alter from one position to another, it is a diphthong.

An example is the sound ‘ay’. The mouth closes slightly as you say the sound.

There are 4 main diphthongs and 2 vanish diphthongs.

The four main ones are (remember the sound only):

My house joins new

Two vanish are: road way

One of thse vanish sounds - oh - seems to cause a lot of people learning english as a foreign language a great deal of trouble.

Triphthongs

If there are three positions, it’s a triphthong. An example of this is ‘our’ which is often mispronounced as ‘are’ which is only a monophthong. Triphthong sounds are fire, flower, coir, pure.

We also have neutral vowels, which are small sounds often squashed between two consonants.

Examples are woman, camel etc. They are unstressed sounds.

Look in the mirror as you say the above words so that you can see how your mouth moves from one position to another.

IMPORTANT

Say ‘the’ before a consonant sound ie. ’the’ bath but say ‘thee’ before a vowel sound ie. the apple is pronounced ‘thee’ apple.

Consonant Sounds

A consonant sound comes up through the vocal cords and is then stopped in the mouth by the contact of two of the organs of speech.

We have to remember that it is the sound of the consonant and not the letter name that is important. The fourth letter of the alphabet is called ‘dee’ but its sound is not dee but more of a duh.

To achieve good articulation each word must be finished right to the last syllable and to the final consonant.

This articulation helps us to project our voice and this means that we do not have to shout which is obviously beneficial to us. Being able to use our organs of speech correctly enables the sound to carry further, just as using the correct grip will make hitting a tennis ball or golf ball easier and will enable it to go further. The wrong technique will give you aches and pains just as shouting will give you a sore throat.

The organs of speech need as much training and care as any other muscles in the body.

Try the sounds below out loud to see how the organs of speech work.

The two lips touching produce the ‘p’, ‘b’ and ‘m’ sounds – (puh, buh and muh)

The teeth and lips touching create a ‘f’ or ‘v’ sound.

The tongue and hard palate mage a ‘d’, ‘t’, ‘n’ or ‘l’ sound.

The tongue and soft palate produce the ‘k’ and ‘g’ sounds.

In the English language we also have to differentiate between voiced and unvoiced consonant sounds. To confuse things further these voiced or unvoiced sounds can be sustained or explosive.

This means that we have pairs of consonant sounds called cognates. The 't' and 'd' are examples. The 't' sound is made with our breath (unvoiced)and the 'd' with our voice, (voiced).

Students learning to speak English as a foreign language often make mistakes with these cognates but it is something that can be practised and easily corrected.

Students learning to speak Engliah as a foreign language sometimes try too hard but if we make our speech too perfect it sounds terrible and an example of this is when there are two consonant sounds which are the same, next to each other.

‘Last time’ is an example – we only need to pronounce the ‘t’ once and that is the second 't', we let the first one blend into the second. The same applies to ‘hot dog’.