The strong part of a word keeps its vowel. The parts that are not strong are said with one short, plain sound, the flat vowel, whether they are spelled a, e, o or u. Counted on every word of two or more parts in the 2,800, it is more than half of all the weak parts, and the two kinds that are not flat are easy to name.
Core ideas
Three ideas. The first two connect this lesson to the last three.
The first three lessons found the strong part. The rest of the word is weak, apart from a part that carries a smaller beat, as the first part of education does. The strong part keeps a clear vowel; a weak part gives up its vowel.
About, today, listen and minute have a weak part spelled with a, o, e and u. In all four it is said the same, with a short, plain sound that a mouth makes when it does not try. This is the flat vowel.
The y at the end of happy is said as the vowel of see. The ending of active and basic takes the vowel of sit. A weak part is not always flat, but it is never as clear as a strong one.
The material
Out of 2628 weak parts in 1779 words, four kinds of vowel account for nearly all.
Say about slowly: a-bout. Now say it as you would in a sentence. The first part is so short that you hardly hear a vowel in it. The second carries the word. The first lesson of this course found where the strong part goes. This one is about the parts around it.
Every part of a word that is not the strong part is weak. A weak part is said shorter and quieter, and its vowel loses its clear shape. The sound it falls to most often has a name in this course: the flat vowel. It is the short, plain sound at the start of about, said with no effort, and it is the commonest vowel among the weak parts counted here.
The lab takes every word of two or more parts in the 2,800 and keeps the parts the dictionary marks with no beat at all. A part with a smaller beat, such as the first part of education, keeps a clear vowel and is not counted, and a word whose other parts all carry one, such as airline, is not in the table. That leaves 1779 words and 2628 weak parts. For each weak part the lab reads the vowel from the pronouncing dictionary.
The flat vowel has no letter of its own. It is written with whichever vowel letter the word had when it was written down. In the lab, find about, today, listen and minute in the table, and read the kind of their weak parts. They are all the same kind, and the four spellings are the four letters in the worked example.
Most of the 348 parts that say the vowel of see are the -y at the end of a word such as happy, city or money. It is weak, and it is not flat. The rest are mostly an i or e said before another vowel, as in radio, area and create, or the front piece re- of remind and report. The vowel of sit belongs to endings such as -ive in active, -ic in basic and -ing in morning, evening and nothing. The list holds few words that end in -ing, since it holds base forms, but the ones it holds follow the rule.
Both are still weak. Say the y of happy quickly and lightly, and give the push to the first part.
The rules of the last three lessons say where the strong part is. This lesson says what the rest sounds like. A word said with a clear strong part and flat, quiet parts around it is a word a listener hears at once, even if one sound is wrong.
Two limits. The sounds are American, from the dictionary's first reading of each word, and a British speaker may use a different vowel in some weak parts. And the table counts the vowel of a part, not how long or how loud the part is.
Interactive
Each rule reads a word's class or ending; the dictionary says which part is strong
Every sound, part count and strong part here is read from the first pronunciation in CMUdict, the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which records American speech. Its licence asks that this notice travel with anything made from it:
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Method
Four steps, in this order.
Use the rules of the last three lessons, or the dictionary. In about it is bout.
The first part of about, the second of listen and the last of minute.
Short, quiet, and the same sound for every vowel letter.
A y at the end says the vowel of see. -ive, -ic and -ing say the vowel of sit. A part ending in r is the flat vowel with an r.
Find the weak part of each word and say it. The letter is different each time and the sound is not.
The letters are a, o, e and u. A reader who says each as its letter says four different sounds, and none is the sound in the word.
The next course, Listening, shows the same thing in the small words. “Why It Sounds Too Fast” counts how many of the words of a passage are small words said weak.
You should be able to pick out the weak parts of a word, say each as the flat vowel, read the share of weak parts that take it off the table, and name the two kinds that take another vowel.
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