Names of phoneme

Regular poster   Sunday, October 17, 2004, 00:59 GMT
I know the inverted "e", is known as the schwa. Do other phoneme in the English language have names as well?
Mxsmanic   Sunday, October 17, 2004, 01:30 GMT
Most of them do not have names; the schwa is an exception.
Regular poster   Sunday, October 17, 2004, 01:35 GMT
That's unfortunate. I wanted to do some research on the Internet about the position of each individual phoneme in the English system by googling the descriptive names of each one. Sadly, that's not going to be the case I'm afraid.
Dan   Sunday, October 17, 2004, 01:50 GMT
Smith   Sunday, October 17, 2004, 02:46 GMT
''I know the inverted "e", is known as the schwa. Do other phoneme in the English language have names as well?''

Here are some names that are commonly given to some of the phonemes by primary school. But, they lie about what the sound really is.

short ''a'' [@]
short ''e'' [e]
short ''i'' [i]
short ''o'' [o] or [a:]
short ''u'' [^]
short ''oo'' [u]

long ''a'' [ei]
long ''e'' [i:]
long ''i'' [ai]
long ''o'' [Ou]
long ''u'' [ju:]
long ''oo'' [u:]

Though some of their so-called long vowels are really diphthongs and one of their so-called short vowels is a long vowel in American English.
Tom   Sunday, October 17, 2004, 15:04 GMT
/@/ is called "ash".
Jim   Monday, October 18, 2004, 02:23 GMT
"Ash" is the name for the letter "Æ"/"æ". In many phonemic transcriptions "æ" is used for /@/. Thus if you call /../ "schwa", call /@/ "ash". But I'd prefer to use the terms "the schwa vowel" and "the ash vowel" to avoid any confusion as to whether I'm talking about the letter/symbol or the sound.

The position of vowel phonemes can vary from dialect to dialect. Here's a useful link which tells you about their positions in Aussie English, New Zealand English, Recieved Pronunciation, Midwestern US English and Californian English.

http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonetics/ausenglish/auseng_vowels.html

Go down to the section entitled "The Vowel Systems of Four English Dialects" and you'll find eight links. Click on them and you'll see twelve vowel charts.