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CARDINAL VOWELS

The Cardinal Vowel [CV] system allows us to describe the range of humanly possible vowel sounds. Although such a system was talked about in the 19th century, it was Daniel Jones who perfected it. It gives us the vowel area [trapezium].

The CVs:

• are vowels, ie produced without any substantial obstruction to the passage of air through the mouth [technically often called vocoid].
• are reference points in relation to which any vowel sound in any accent of any language can be described.
• are language- and accent-independent, that is, they represent vowel sounds which anyone with normal physiology can produce. They do not necessarily correspond exactly to the vowel sounds of any particular language or accent.
• are peripheral, that is, they occur on the edge of the vowel space, being maximally front/back and/or high/low. They may therefore sound more exaggerated than vowel sounds in accents of languages.
• can be pronounced long or short. The CV only indicates the tongue and lip position.
• are represented by symbols which in many cases are the same symbols as those used for English phonemes. However, this does not mean that the CV value is exactly the same as the English phoneme value. We are simply limited in the number of symbol-shapes available for use, and they are therefore put to use in two different ways for different purposes.
• are best learnt by imitation from someone who already knows them. In this way visual aspects such as lip-rounding or the extent of jaw-lowering can be easily seen and imitated. Such information cannot be readily appreciated from the sound files in this website.

The two anchor points of the system are [i] and [A]. The CV [i] is produced with the tongue as high and as front as possible, consistent with it still being a vowel. That is, if you were to raise your tongue slightly higher, you would start to produce friction against the palate and the sound would then need to be classified as a consonant. The CV [A] is produced with the tongue as low and as back as possible. The other CVs have intermediate front and back values.

The primary CVs are conventionally numbered sequentially down the front [1 to 4] and up the back [5 to 8]. CVs 1 to 5 are unrounded, while 6 to 8 are rounded. The secondary CVs [9 to 16] have the same tongue positions, but the opposite lip-rounding positions, as the primaries. Thus, CV 9 [y] has the same high front tongue position as CV 1 [i], but [y] is rounded while [i] is unrounded.

This website introduces the 8 primary and 8 secondary CVs. Other CVs at other points in the vowel space have been found useful, but are not dealt with here. See, for example, the inside front cover of Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics.

PRIMARY CARDINALS

SECONDARY CARDINALS

[ Vowels ] [ Consonants ] [ Kay-poh ] [ Email ]