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Monophthong
 
 
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A monophthong (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 µ???f??????, "monophthongos" = single note) is a "pure" vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down
Semivowel

Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....
 towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong
Diphthong

In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
.

In the English language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, there are in practice relatively few monophthongs. The position, beginnings, and endings of vowel articulation are perhaps the chief distinguishing feature among the various dialect
Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
s of English; the differences between the pronunciations of British English
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
 and American English
American English

PhonologyIn many ways, compared to English language in England, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States , partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties we...
 are largely a result of the different realization of vowel sounds.






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A monophthong (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 µ???f??????, "monophthongos" = single note) is a "pure" vowel
Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
 sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down
Semivowel

Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllable vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the syllable nucleus of a syllable or mora ; they are not the most prominence part of the syllable....
 towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong
Diphthong

In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
.

In the English language
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, there are in practice relatively few monophthongs. The position, beginnings, and endings of vowel articulation are perhaps the chief distinguishing feature among the various dialect
Dialect

A dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class....
s of English; the differences between the pronunciations of British English
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
 and American English
American English

PhonologyIn many ways, compared to English language in England, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States , partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties we...
 are largely a result of the different realization of vowel sounds. The conversion of monophthongs to diphthongs, or of diphthongs to monophthongs, is a major element of language change
Language change

Language change is the manner in which the Phonetics, Morphology , Semantics, Syntax, and other features of a language are modified over time. All languages are continually changing....
 and is likely the cause of further changes. Some sounds that may be perceived by native speakers as monophthongs in both these varieties of English are, in fact, diphthongs; the vowel sound in pay — is an example of this. Some dialects of English make monophthongs out of former diphthongs. The vowel boat is generally realized as a diphthong or . Also, the speech of the southern United States tends to alter the diphthong as in eye to an somewhere between and . On the other hand, former monophthongs have become diphthongs in American English such as the in words like pin changing to in some American dialects.

Historically, some languages treat vowel sounds that were formerly diphthongs as monophthongs. Such is the case in Sanskrit
Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India....
, in whose grammar the sounds now realised as and are conceptually ai and au, and are written that way in the Devanagari
Devanagari

, or 'Nagari', is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal. It is written from left to right, lacks distinct letter cases, and is recognizable by a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the letters that links them together....
 and related alphabets. The sounds and exist in Sanskrit, but are written as if they were ai and au, with long initial vowels. Similar processes of the creation of new monophthongs from old diphthongs are preserved in the traditional spellings of languages as diverse as French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 and modern Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
.

See also


  • Vowel
    Vowel

    In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis....
  • Diphthong
    Diphthong

    In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
  • Triphthong
    Triphthong

    In phonetics, a triphthong is a syllable vowel combination involving a glissando of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third....
  • List of vowels
  • List of phonetics topics
    List of phonetics topics

    A * Acoustic phonetics* Active articulator* Affricate* Airstream mechanism* Alfred C. Gimson* Allophone* Alveolar approximant* Alveolar consonant...