Chapter 3: Diphthongs



1. What are diphthongs?

Diphthongs are sounds which consists of a movement or glide from one vowel to another. There are two types of diphthongs which are centring and closing diphthongs.


2. How they are produced?

The centring diphthongs glide toward the schwa vowel. However, the closing diphthongs have the characteristic that they all end with the glide towards a closer vowel.


3. What are they?

Centring diphthongs = [Iə], [eə], [ʊə]

Closing diphthongs = [eI], [aI], [ɔI], [əʊ], [aʊ]


4. What are examples of words with diphthongs?

Centring diphthongs
[I] = ‘fear’, ‘gear’, ‘dear’

[eə] =’ere’, ‘air’

[ʊə] =’poor’, ‘lure’


Closing diphthongs

[eI] = ‘said’, ‘reign’, ‘reike’

[aI] = ‘buy’, ‘tie’, ‘lie’

[ɔI] = ‘boy’, ‘toy’, ‘foil’

[əʊ] = ‘comb’, ‘coma’, ‘cold’

[aʊ] = ‘bow’, ‘cow’, ‘allow’