A diphthong is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds that occur as a nucleus of a syllable. Since they are two vowel sounds, diphthongs are represented by two vowel symbols. For this reason, diphthongs are different from a composite vowel sound like /ju/ in cue and few. Here the vowel sound starts with the semivowel /j/ and then moves into the vowel /u/. Since composite vowels are composed of a semivowel and a vowel, they can be viewed as being composed of an onset and a nucleus. But diphthongs are fully contained in the syllable nucleus.
There are five diphthongs in standard American English. They can be divided into two groups based on the final vowel sound, /ɪ/ or /ʊ/. Those ending with /ɪ/ are /eɪ/, /aɪ/ & /ɔɪ/, and those that end with /ʊ/ are /aʊ/ and /oʊ/.
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| Diphthongs: /eɪ/, /aɪ/ & /ɔɪ/ |
The production of a diphthong is easy since all you need to do is to start from one vowel sound and then glide into another vowel sound. So for example, for /eɪ/, you begin with /e/ sound and then glide into /ɪ/ sound, and for /aɪ/, you begin with /a/ sound and then glide into /ɪ/ sound, and so on. In this section, we learn diphthongs that end with /ɪ/, and in the next section, we examine diphthongs that end with /ʊ/.
/eɪ/
/eɪ/ words
These are words with the sound /eɪ/:
with “a”:
able, ache, age, ancient, bathe, blame, brake, cake, case, date, escape, face, fade, game, gate, gaze, lake, late, major, male, make, name, pale, place, plate, range, sale, same, sane, snake, spade, stake, state, take, tale, trace, whale
with “ai”:
aid, aim, brain, chain, claim, detail, explain, fail, gain, hail, jail, main, paid, plain, praise, rail, rain, raise, remain, retail, sail, snail, Spain, stain, straight, tail, train, trait, wait, wave
with “ay”:
day, delay, essay, display, pay, pray, play, say, stay, today, tray, way
with “eigh”:
weigh, weighed, weight
with “au”
‘Gauge’ is also pronounced with /eɪ/
/eɪ/ homophones
These are homophones:
brake - break
grate - great
male - mail
plane - plain
rain - reign
sail - sale
steak - stake
tale - tail
wave - waive
waste - waist
Wales - whales
weigh - way
weight - wait
weighed - wade
/ɛ/, /eɪ/ minimal pairs
bet, bait
bell, bail
chest chased
debt, date
edge age
fell fail
gel, jail
gems James
get, gate
hell, hail
led laid
let late
Mel, mail
men main
met, mate
pell, pail
pen pain
pepper paper
quell, quail
red, raid
sell, sail
shell, shale
Snell, snail
sped spade
test taste
tell tale
well, wail
well whale
west waste
wet, wait
when, wane
wren, rain
/aɪ/
/aɪ/ words
The diphthong /aɪ/ can be found in these words:
with “ie”:
lie, pie, tie
with “i”:
bind, blind, child, climb, bike, drive, file, fine, ice, item, smile, strike, time, title, while, white, wide, fight, flight, fright
with “igh”:
height, high, light, might
with “y”:
apply, cycle, deny, July, rye, shy, sky, style
/aɪər/ words
/aɪ/ in combination with /r/ is an r-colored vowel, that is pronounced /aɪər/.
acquire, choir, desire, entire, fire, hire, inspire, Ireland, iron, require, retire, umpire, wire
Exceptions:
In the following words, the /r/ does not make the preceding vowel an r-colored vowel:
gyrate, irate, pirate, spiral, virus
That is, you don’t say ‘gyer.ate’ or ‘pir.ate’, but ‘gy.rate’ and ‘pi.rate’.
/aɪ/ homophones
These are /aɪ/ homophones:
aisle - I'll - isle
bite - byte
buy - by
cite - site - sight
die - dye
fined - find
high - hi
I - eye
knight - night
mined - mind
right - rite - write
sighed - side
sighs - size
sight - site
time - thyme
whine - wine
why - Y
These are words that can be pronounced in a few different ways:
‘Either’ and ‘neither’ can be pronounced as /ˈaɪðər, ˈiːðər/, /ˈnaɪðər, ˈniːðər/.
‘Fragile’ is pronounced as /ˈfrædʒaɪl/ in England, but /frædʒəl/ in America.
‘Geyser’ is pronounced as /ɡiːzər/ in England, but /ɡaɪzər/ in America.
/ɔɪ/
And finally we have the diphthong /ɔɪ/ sound. The spelling of this sound is very straightforward: normally "oy" at the end of the syllable and "oi" in other positions. Exceptions are usually found in proper nouns, like “Joyce” and “Freud”.
/ɔɪ/ words
These are words with /ɔɪ/ sound:
with “oi”:
avoid, choice, coin, Illinois, join, joint, point, noise, voice, android, moisture, ointment, poison, sirloin, toilet, oil, soil, spoil, boil, foil
with “oy”:
boy, destroy, destroyer, employ, employee, employer, enjoy, Floyd, joy, Joyce, Lloyd, royal, toy, annoy, boycott, soy
/eɪ/, /aɪ/ & /ɔɪ/ sentences
These are sentences with the /eɪ/, /aɪ/ & /ɔɪ/ sounds.
With /eɪ/
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain!
I ate the cake on the plate.
Can you explain this claim in plain English?
They weighed the snail every day.
The sailor was put into jail without delay.
With /aɪ/
The child in style smiled widely.
Birds fly high in the July Sky.
They desire to travel the entire Ireland.
When we are frightened, we either fight or flight.
With /ɔɪ/
He poisoned his employer with sirloin steak.
The boy in Illinois joined the Boycott.
You need to boil the oil to cook the oyster.
Join the club!
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