The EH-Sound
So the next vowel we will talk about is the EH-sound. For me, it’s easier to remember what sound I am referring to by writing it as the EH-sound over the IPA symbol.
However, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for this sound is /ɛ/. Its sound symbol is a backwards 3 in my head or for you formal people, the lowercase Epsilon.
In General American English and Canadian English, the [ɛ] sound is the sound in the word ‘BED’ or ‘PET’.
SYMBOL
On the IPA vowel chart, it is located on the mid-to-lower left side. It is a front vowel with open-mid vowel height.
The Color Vowel® Chart, created by Karen Taylor and Shirley Thompson in 1999, is another visual organizer for spoken English and represents how to learn and think about vowels. It refers to this sound as the ‘Red Pepper Pepper’ sound or the Red vowel. Notice the consistent placement on the top left corner of each respective chart.
The Color Vowel® Chart, 5th Edition © 2019. ColorVowel.com. Used with Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC-ND).
SOUND
The EH-Sound is the same sound you would make to say ‘MEH’ or ‘EH’
The jaw opens a fair amount for this vowel. The tongue tip is forward and down in neutral mouth position. You may feel the tip of your tongue touching the inside of your lower front teeth. The middle of the tongue lifts partially towards the roof of the mouth. You may feel more tension or tensing in your mid-tongue because of this.
FEATURES
The [ɛ] sound features are as follows.
Its vowel height is open-mid, also known as low-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel (a low vowel) and a mid vowel.
Its vowel backness is front, which means the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.
The jaw drops a bit more than for the EE-sound, IH-sound and AY-sound.
Think of it like a gradient of jaw opening. As your jaw drops, the vowel height widens and that has an effect on the So, if you feel comfortable with the vowels so far, start with EE-sound. Open your mouth slightly more for the IH-sound. Open your mouth a little more for the AY sound. Open your mouth slightly more for the EH-sound. The tongue tip stays forward and down against the floor of the mouth. And with each incremental additional jaw opening, you should feel the tone in your jaw increase.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION
In English, this sound is reflected in spelling in many different ways.
This sound can be represented by 8 different spelling patterns:
e - left, pet, ten, better, elevator, preset, sent, end
ea - sweat, dealt, treasure, read/red
ai - said, again
a - many, says*
ie - friend
ue - guess, guest
*SAYS is an important word to recognize. We actually pronounce it like “sEHz” but non-native English speakers will oftentimes pronounce it like “sAYs”.
The reason why I’m especially showing you the different spelling combinations that can create this sound is that there will ALWAYS be exceptions, weird spellings, or other things that impact how reliable the written representation will be. You need to be able to identify the sound; rhyming is an excellent way to match it properly. So, if you are not good already, start practicing rhyming and hearing the sound.
LISTENING
Sometimes, it can sometimes be hard to hear the difference between the EE-sound, the IH-sound, and the EH-sound for nonnative English speakers. Here’s a list of words to highlight the difference. The words are EXACTLY the same except one has the EE-vowel and one has the IH-vowel.
| EE | IH |
AY | EH |
|---|---|---|---|
| been | bin | bane | Ben |
| read | rid | raid | red |
| teak | tick | take | tech |
I’m breaking down every single sound down for you so that you can learn how to produce each sound in English accurately. Sometimes, we’ll have easier sounds and sometimes we’ll have harder sounds.
If you’ve grasped this sound, then great! But if you’ve got a tip that might work for others, or you took a while to produce this sound correct but something clicked for you, let me know down below in the comments. My goal is to have a community know what to do when they’re stuck!
