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A monophthong is a "pure" vowel sound, one whose articulation at both
beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare
diphthong.
In the English language, there are in practice relatively few
monophthongs. The position, beginnings, and endings of vowel articulation are perhaps the chief distinguishing feature among the
various dialects of English; the deep gulf between British English and American English is
a result of the different realization of vowel sounds. The conversion of monophthongs to diphthongs, or of diphthongs to
monophthongs, is a major cause of language change. Some sounds that are perceived as monophthongs in both varieties of English are in fact
diphthongs, such as the vowel sound in pay (SAMPA /peI/). In British English,
the sound of /o:/ as in boat tends to become a diphthong /@U/; American English has either a pure vowel /o:/ or a
diphthong with much less change of articulation /oU/ in this position. On the other hand, some dialects of English make
monophthongs out of former diphthongs, such as the speech of the southern United States, which tends to alter the diphthong /aI/
as in eye to a vowel sound somewhere between /a:/ and /{/. Another new diphthong that has arisen from a former
monophthong can be heard in some American English pronunciation of words like pin, in which the /n/ sound becomes
syllabic, and to the listener it sounds like it is preceded by a short mid central vowel.
Historically, some languages treat vowel sounds that were formerly diphthongs as monophthongs. Such is the case in Sanskrit, in whose grammar the sounds now realised as /e/ and /o/ are conceptually
ai and au, and are written that way in the Devanagari and
related alphabets. The sounds /ai/ and /au/ exist in Sanskrit, but are written as if they were âi and âu, 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 and modern Greek.
See also
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