Do we need pull the corner of mouth to pronounce vowel "

Clari   Tue Mar 09, 2010 8:21 am GMT
To pronounce the vowel e in words like yet, net, set, ... do we just half open the mouth to make the sound, or do we also need to pull the corner of the mouth back slightly? Which is the correct way?
Jimmy_cantgrowabeard   Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:33 am GMT
No corner pulling required.
^.^   Tue Mar 09, 2010 10:58 am GMT
You need to pull your nipples , if you want to pronounce a perfect "e".
Clari   Wed Mar 10, 2010 2:11 am GMT
Thanks for the above answer.
I just found some online information about the vowels. So basically there are two types of vowels, one is tense, another is lax.

Vowel Tenseness:
Tense vowels (produced with a great amount of muscular tension
for example: see, bought, book,bird,far

Lax vowels (produced with very little muscular tension):
for example: sit,bet,bat,good,bottle,but, letter

so the yet, net, set shall fall into second category.
hu   Wed Mar 10, 2010 1:27 pm GMT
"book" has the same vowel as "good".
I put more tension in "bat" than in "bird"or "see".

I don't know where you got that info.
Uriel   Thu Mar 11, 2010 4:18 am GMT
I get the feeling Clari is using the British model rather than the American, hu, which accounts for the differences. To say "bought" or "bird" like a Brit does seem to require more lip work, whereas in my own accent, "bought" is nothing but the first syllable of bottle (baht, bahdl). "Far" doesn't require any tension on my part either, but to say "faah" would.

No, the short E in net, set, etc. doesn't require any particular motion. In fact, of all the short vowels, it's sort of the default sound you make when not doing anything particular with your mouth besides opening it slightly.

However, I smile slightly when saying the short A of bat or cat, which causes it to sound different than the closely-related short A.

There's no smiling involved in making a short U, but I do pull the back of my tongue down slightly to make an "uh" sound. (Cue stupid comment, of course.) I have to tense it slightly to vary the short E to a short I (ih).

My short O is exactly like the classic A in father (ah), and I think most people know how to do that.
Clari   Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:13 am GMT
@Hu
I got the information from this link
http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/english-phonetics.html
The example words are not in the original article, but added by myself. Due to carelessness, I wrongly selected some words, for example, book. It is meant to be an example of u: sound, but that is a wrong choice, as book is /buk/ according to the dictionary. I am sorry for this mistake. Words with /u:/ sound are tooth, loom, etc

And my Longman dictionary shows that book and good has different sound. which dictionary do you use?