Close front unrounded vowel

In English, both in Received Pronunciation and in General American, the IPA phonetic symbol /iː/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "fleece", "tree" and "seat". Sometimes the triangular colon /ː/ is replaced by a normal colon, as in /i:/. This phoneme is informally called “long E”.

Common words

Some common words which practice this pronunciation include the following:

• with "e": Template:Long "e" in the middle of the word

final "e": be - he - me - she - we

With magic e: athlete - compete - complete - concrete - delete - extreme - gene - scene - scheme - supreme - theme - these

• with "ea": beach - bead - beat - bleach - breathe - cheat - clean - cream - creature - deal - dream - each - easy - eat - feature - heal - heat - increase - jeans - lead (verb) - leader - leaf - lean - leave - meal - mean - meat - pea - peach - peak - please - reach - read - repeat - reason - reveal - scream - sea - seal - seat - steal - steam - stream - teach - team - treat - weak

• with "ee": between - eel - feel - keep - meet - need - see - seem - sleep - speed - street - three - week
• with "ei": ceiling - perceive - receipt - receive
• with "ie": achieve - belief - believe - brief - chief - field - piece - relief
• with "i": Christine - machine - magazine - police - routine
• others: key - people - ski - suite
• homophones: feat/feet; genes/jeans; heal/heel; meat/meet; pea/pee/P; peace/piece; sea/see/C; scene/seen; steal/steel; suite/sweet; tea/tee/T; weak/week; we'll/wheel;

Anticipated pronunciation difficulties depending on L1

Preconceived ideas and other interferences from L1 obviously interfere in many cases with how students perceive - and pronounce - sounds/words in English. The following section aims to point out some of the most typical difficulties teachers and students may encounter regarding pronunciation.

Spanish

While /iː/ is similar to the Spanish letter "i", it is actually much longer, and some Spanish speakers may have difficulty distinguishing between the vowel sound in "seen" and that of /ɪ/, as in "sin", which is shorter than the Spanish "i".

A problem much easier to correct is when students pronounce below their level of English. In words that are similar to Spanish, many people are confused by the spelling. The may pronounce "region" (Spanish región) as */ˈredʒən/ or "obesity" (Spanish obesidad) as */ɒˈbesɪtɪ/. Any attempt at /iː/ they make will be much better than pronouncing /e/.

See also

• Homophones
• Pronunciation
• Pronunciation exercises: /ɪ/ vs /iː/
• Pronunciation of the letter E
• Silent e

External links

• British Library: Learning - Sounds Familiar?