How many vowel phonemes should I teach students of English now?

[TaiwanPofLee]

How many vowel phonemes should I teach students of English now? And, what are they?

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

Why is this question so difficult to answer?

 

[Raymott]

Why is this question so difficult to answer?

I don't think it's difficult, so much. It's probably that no one wants to tell you, because you're not going to believe them anyway. You will teach what you will, and use your own made up symbols.
Didn't you tell us there were 13 (or was it 16) vowel sounds in English? Didn't one of us say something like, "Yes, more or less, depending upon the dialect?"

Here are 21, below. This doesn't include triphthongs such as /ɑʊə/ (tower), /ɑɪə/ (fire), /eɪə/ (player), /əʊə/ (lower), /ɔɪə/ (loyal).
That's 26. There are more opinions about the number of vowel sounds on the link below the diagram.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...v&sa=X&ei=k_80Vcy0DMHBmAW3v4DYCg&ved=0CC0QsAQ

http://www.anenglishaccent.com/vowels.html

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

Thank you for your response, Raymott.

I'm teaching my students of American English in Taiwan 19 vowel phonemes, using my own phonetic symbols.
https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/221675-pronunciations-of-O-and-I/page3
And I know there are diversity of opinions about the number of vowel phonemes in English.
http://www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/curriculum/literacy/lit_site/lit_sites/phonemes_001/ (Notice the phonetic transcriptions!)
I am asking this question for the purposes of discussion, enlightenment and facilitating teaching methods.

If only English had unified standard vowel and consonant phonemes as Chinese!

 

[MikeNewYork]

Doesn't Chinese have different pronunciations?

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

Doesn't Chinese have different pronunciations?

Chinese, of course, has dialects and different accents, but there is unified standard pronunciation.

How to Pronounce Mandarin Chinese, http://mandarin.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/How-To-Pronounce-Mandarin-Chinese.htm

But, I prefer the traditional Chinese phonetic system of ㄅㄆㄇㄈ (ie zhuyin) used in Taiwan to Pinyin as developed and used in China since the 1950s.

 

[MikeNewYork]

What about Cantonese?

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

What about Cantonese?

Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese spoken mainly in Canton (a province in southern China) and Hong Kong. Canton and HK people speak both Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese. Taiwan people speak both Mandarin Chinese and Hokkien.

 

[MikeNewYork]

But, from what I understand, the pronunciations are different.

 

[Esredux]

How many vowel phonemes should I teach students of English now? And, what are they?

...

...I'm teaching my students of American English in Taiwan 19 vowel phonemes, using my own phonetic symbols.

...

I am asking this question for the purposes of discussion, enlightenment and facilitating teaching methods.

...

If only English had unified standard vowel and consonant phonemes as Chinese!

I am not sure what might be the subject of discussion here. The question you are asking seems to be of the type teachers generally have to face somewhere between needs analysis and course planning. The target language may vary considerably depending on the students - quite a few might be much better off with just problem phonemes, the-so-called minimal pairs that can cause misunderstanding. At least, that's how we tackle this question in this country. (How it could help you is beyond my understanding as I am fairly sure my and your students won't ever meet in this life)

Besides, I don't believe there is a language without any noticeable difference in pronunciation maybe apart from those that very few people speak.

 

[TaiwanPofLee]

My question especially concerns a changing trend in vowel phonemes of American English.
Please see the Pronunciation Symbols used by the Merriam-Webster English dictionary.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html

While teaching English phonemes to my Taiwan students, I analyze and compare similarities and differences of English, Mandarin Chinese and Hokkien pronunciations.

As an interesting puzzle, you might want to figure out how I use the following data:
(4) 依近似音分組如下:
A組: [A], [e] ㄝ, [a] (大嘴ㄝ)
E組: [E], (台)乙
I 組: , [ow] ㄠ
O組: [O], [>] ㄛ, [>i]
U組: , [yx], [y.]
ㄨ組: [X] ㄨ, [x] (台)有
ㄚ組: [o] ㄚ, (小嘴ㄚ)
ㄜ組: [.] ㄜ, [.r] ㄦ