Unstressed Syllables Consonants American English Pronunciation
I’ve spent some time talking about
unaccented syllables that contain vowel
sounds I want to take a minute to talk
about
unaccented syllables in which the sound
is a consonant sound the first one are
now a can be the R consonant or really
it can be the ER as in her vowel to me
her or they are the same sound one
functions is a consonant and one
functions as a vowel meaning it’s
usually a little longer so when words
end in ER they take this a sound for the
entire syllable now it will be written
in IPA with a schwa and an R but for me
it goes straight into this sound for
example water water there’s no real
schwa in there father father or daughter
daughter so all of these for me goes
straight into the
sound where the air makes up the whole
syllable the second sound is the dark L
now if you’ve seen my other videos you
know that the dark L which is an L that
comes at the end of a syllable or a word
really is paired with a vowel this vowel
is not written in IPA but it’s similar
to the as in whole where the lips come
away from the mouth a little bit
Oh Oh before the tongue closes up into
the L position words that have this are
words that end in L II for example
buckle o straight from the K to the all
dark L sound bottle o again straight
into that sound ankle o ankle example o
example
the next sound is the M consonant sound
now again this is written with the schwa
and it can be argued if the consonant
before is voiced that you have to slide
through schwa to get to the voiced M but
this is another sound in which I really
feel when it is unaccented that
sometimes it simply takes up the entire
syllable with no vowel for example
fathom straight from that voiced th into
the M fathom awesome awesome for me
again it goes straight from the one
consonant sound into the M sound and the
last sound is related to the M it is the
end mmm Wisconsin hmm hmm cotton caught
mmm dolphin mm-hmm cousin hmm so again
for me these are all words in which the
end takes up really the whole of the
unaccented syllable leaving no room for
a vowel