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The letter O corresponds to the following sounds.
/þ/ cot

/ɔː/ story
o /υ/ book
/uː/ food
/Λ/ come
/Əυ/ go, no
The letter U corresponds to the following sounds.

/υ/ pull
/uː/ crude
u /jυ/ cucumber
/juː/ music
/Λ/ hut
/Ʒː/ burn
Some letter combinations too correspond to more than one sound.

/k/ character
ch /t∫/ church
/∫/ machine

/Əυ/ though
/Λf/ rough
ough /þf/ cough
/uː/ through
/ɔː/ bought

Now let us study the sound system of the English language in detail. As men-
tioned earlier English has 44 sounds all of which are produced by the egres-
sive pulmonic air stream mechanism, (i.e., the air that is moving out of the
lungs is modified at several regions in the vocal tract to produce the different
sounds).
The organs involved in the production of speech are: the trachea, the
larynx containing the vocal cords, the glottis, the pharynx, the tongue, the
lips, the roof of the mouth which includes the alveolar ridge, the hard palate,
the soft palate or velum, and the uvula.
The sounds that are produced when the air stream moves out freely
and continuously, without any obstruction, are termed vowels. There are 20
vowel sounds in English. Twelve of them are called monophthongs or pure
vowels where the tongue takes a single position to produce them. The other

Bhatnagar_Chapter 09.indd 192 2011-06-23 7:52:55 PM
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