Glossary

Intelligibility

The extent to which a person’s speech is understood by a listener – including individual sounds and words as well as the speaker’s intended meaning.

International intelligibility

The extent to which a person’s speech is understood by a listener in an international context, that is, a context in which both listener and speaker are second-language users of English. This context of interaction is sometimes referred to as using English as a lingua franca. This is by far the most common use of English in the world today and the Pron Planner was designed with this in mind. For more information, see ‘About this tool’.

L1

First language. Sometimes referred to as ‘mother tongue’. The pronunciation characteristics of a person’s L1 are widely agreed to be one of the main influencing factors on their pronunciation in a second language (L2).

EVP

English Vocabulary Profile. The example words given for particular pronunciation features in the Pron Planner have been cross-referenced with EVP to give the user a sense of the CEFR level at which learners are likely to know those example words. This is shown in square brackets (for example, bag [A1]).

Thus, the same pronunciation feature can be included in a syllabus at all different CEFR levels, but different words can be selected to exemplify that pronunciation feature which are appropriate to learners at a particular CEFR level.

Where an example word in the Pron Planner was not included in the data used to compile EVP (for example, names of countries), this is indicated in the example box with the label ‘[not in EVP]’.

Phoneme

A single unit of sound, and the smallest unit which can change meaning within a language. For example, in English, the words ‘right’ and ‘light’ have distinct meanings and differ by only one sound (/r/ or /l/ at the beginning).

Different languages have different sets of phonemes, so learners may struggle to hear or produce a phoneme in English which does not occur in their language. In this case, they might replace the English sound with something else which is easier for them to articulate, or they might not make a clear distinction between the two sounds. This can result in confusion for listeners (such as when a Japanese learner of English pronounces ‘light’ like ‘right’ or vice versa).

Vowel

Not to be confused with vowel letters. In the context of pronunciation, a vowel is a sound which is produced with no obstruction to the airflow. It can be produced for as long as the speaker has enough breath!

In everyday terms, when we say that words rhyme, we’re usually referring to the fact that they have the same vowel sound (as in ‘tea’ and ‘tree’, despite their different spellings).

Consonant

Not to be confused with consonant letters. In the context of pronunciation, a consonant is a sound which is produced with some kind of obstruction to the airflow made by the tongue, teeth or lips. They can be voiced or unvoiced (see below).

English consonant sounds can be represented in spelling by up to three letters, as in watching (/w/ represented by one letter, /ŋ/ represented by two letters, /tʃ/ represented by three letters).

Consonant cluster

A sequence of consonant sounds with no vowel sounds in between. For example, /str/ at the beginning of ‘street’ or /kt/ at the end of ‘liked’.

Different languages have different unwritten rules on how many and which consonants can occur in a cluster, and this can make certain English clusters difficult for some learners to articulate. For example, in Spanish, clusters beginning with /s/ cannot occur at the beginning of words (for example, /st/ in the English word ‘stop’), so many learners will inadvertently add a short vowel sound to the beginning (‘estop’).

Voiced

Some consonant sounds are voiced. This means they are produced with vibration in the vocal folds. For example, /v/. You can feel this vibration if you make the sound /v/ and hold your hand gently against your throat.

Many voiced consonant sounds in English have an unvoiced equivalent. That is, sometimes there is a pair of sounds in a language which have the same position of tongue, teeth and lips, but one of them is produced with voicing and one is produced without voicing. For example:

Unvoiced/voiceless

Some consonant sounds are unvoiced (sometimes called ‘voiceless’). This means they are produced without vibration in the vocal folds. For example, /f/. If you make the sound /f/ and hold your hand gently against your throat, you will notice that there is no vibration.

Many unvoiced consonant sounds in English have a voiced equivalent. That is, sometimes there is a pair of sounds in a language which have the same position of tongue, teeth and lips, but one of them is produced with voicing and one is produced without voicing. For example:

Devoiced

In many of the world’s languages, when a voiced sound occurs at the end of a word (as in the English word ‘bag’), this sound loses its voicing during natural speech. This is called ‘devoicing’ and speakers often don’t even realise they’re doing it. If they carry over this tendency when speaking English, words like ‘bag’ might sound more like ‘back’, or ‘hid’ might sound more like ‘hit’.

Aspiration

The English sounds /p/, /t/ and /k/ are typically pronounced in a particular way when they occur at the start of a stressed syllable and are not in a cluster. In such contexts, they are aspirated, in other words produced with a little puff of air.

If you put your hand in front of your mouth and say ‘pea’, ‘tie’ or ‘cone’, you’ll feel this little puff of air. But if you insert an extra consonant sound after the /p/, /t/ or /k/, as in ‘plea’, ‘try’ or ‘clone’, you’ll notice that there’s no puff of air (in other words, they’re not aspirated). Similarly, if the sounds occur at the end of a syllable (as in ‘up’, ‘cut’ or ‘luck’), or in an unstressed syllable (as in ‘open’, ‘utter’ or ‘aching’), they’re also not aspirated.

Many languages have the sounds /p/, /t/ and /k/ but they don’t all aspirate these sounds in the same way as English.

Word stress

English words are said to have primary stress on one syllable. This is shown in dictionary definitions with a mark like this: ˈ. For example, the word ‘ago’ has two syllables and the second is stressed, so this would be transcribed as /əˈgəʊ/. Thus, the syllable with primary word-stress is most prominent to the listener. This effect is created by making that syllable a little bit longer, a little bit louder and – crucially – a different pitch (usually higher) than the rest of the word.

Nuclear stress

When words are connected in speech, prominence depends on context, rather than being an inherent property of individual words. Speakers automatically and naturally assign prominence as a matter of course, selecting what information to highlight as the most important part of their message and thereby focusing their listeners’ attention on a particular intended meaning.

In English, the most prominent syllable in a small group of words (often called a ‘thought group’) typically defaults to the last ‘content word’ (verbs, nouns, adjectives or adverbs) in an utterance. For example:

I want to visit.
I want to visit it.
I want to visit Cambridge.

Many learners of English will use prominence differently in their first language and transfer these patterns to English, which might confuse a listener (by drawing his/her attention to something which the speaker didn’t intend to highlight). For example:

I want to visit it.
I want to visit Cambridge.

The function of nuclear stress is perhaps easiest to grasp when you consider that we can manipulate it in order to contrast or correct information. For example:

I want to visit Cambridge. (not just read about it!)
You want to visit Cambridge. (but I don’t!)
I want to visit Cambridge. (not some other city!)

Research into intelligibility in English suggests that placing nuclear stress inappropriately can break down communication, but that its placement in English is challenging for learners from many different first-language backgrounds.