Learn English – “Caulk” Vs “Cock” Pronunciation Difference

/i:/ is the vowel that we find in the word FLEECE. I put that word in capitals because that is how that vowel is often referred to by linguists: the fleece vowel - or FLEECE for short. (This is not random, the word was specifically chosen for a number of specific reasons.) It is the vowel sound at the end of the word guarantee. In transcriptions of British English it has a colon [ : ] in the symbol to describe the length.

/ɪ/ is the vowel in the word KIT. It is known as the kit vowel - or KIT for short. It is the vowel we find in prefixes and suffixes, the bits we stick onto the beginnings and ends of words. So, for example it is the vowel we hear in --ing verb endings.

The vowel represented by /i/ at the ends of words in dictionaries is usually referred to as the happy vowel - HAPPY. This vowel may sound like either FLEECE or KIT, but is always short in duration.

If you say the < y > sound that we find in the word yes, and then say the < e> we find in the word end, the kit vowel is somewhere between the two sounds. This is the first vowel in the word infinitely. This word would sound very odd to a native speaker if it was said with a fleece vowel, /i:/! It would sound like a made-up word: eenfinitely.

The Original Poster asks if there is a big difference between these vowels. If we are talking about the physical difference between the sounds, the answer is: no. In fact, it is very unusual to have two vowels that are so similar in one language. They are very close together. In most languages these would count as one vowel. However, if we are talking about the meaning, or the effect on a listener, the answer is: yes! There is a big difference. There are very, very, very many words that we can be confused about if you say the wrong vowel. For example, the words peace and piss. Nobody wants to say Piss man!, when they mean Peace man!.

If you want to type IPA script, this website is very useful

Hope this helps,

Peace!

You will never find a “complete” guide-book because no such thing is possible in English:

The connection between English spelling and pronunciation is one of the most complex mappings between written letters and spoken pronunciation of any language. The reasons for this are many, of which the Great Vowel Shift is probably the single largest contributing factor: English froze its spelling long before it stopped shifting its pronunciation — and in fact, has not stopped yet.

Other factors are many, including loanwords left in the original spelling, historical confusion, and regional differences. English spelling tells a complex tale, and its job is not merely that of pronunciation; it also gives hints to a word’s origin, history, and relationships with other words that would all be lost were a “phonemic” spelling ever somehow adopted.

But even that would be impossible. There are only 26 letters in the current English alphabet, but the number of phonemes in its repertoire is probably in the neighborhood of half again that. And even then you would not know the pronunciation of word, because each phoneme has numerous allophones, many of which are quite different in different parts of the world. No phonetic spelling would ever work, and no phonemic spelling would ever tell one how a word is actually pronounced where you happen to be. Plus we would lose a great deal, so that is never going to happen.

Yes, there are some rules, but there are more exceptions than there are rules. No one who has not seriously studied Middle English, French, Latin, Greek, and a good many other languages from which Modern English derives its words and spellings will be able to have a good grasp of just what the connection is between spelling and pronunciation for any given word, and this takes years of hard study that nearly no one ever pursues.

In the meanwhile, you should learn every new word just like every native speaker does: by listening to others speaking it. And if you chance upon a written word you have never seen before, you will have to look up how to say it in a good pronouncing dictionary (read: nearly nothing made in America, where sadly the International Phonetic Alphabet is virtually unknown).

The spelling of a word and the pronunciation of that word are two very different things in English, each with its own unique history. Nor is there necessarily only one of each: many words have several possible pronunciations; others have several possible spellings, and some have both.

You must therefore learn a word’s spelling and pronunciation separately. Trying to guess one from the other leads to two classes of error. Using the wrong pronunciation of a word based on its spelling is called a spelling pronunciation, while using the wrong spelling of a word based on its pronunciation is called eye dialect. The former is unintentional error, but the latter is occasionally used deliberately by experienced writers to represent the quirks of dialectal speech in writing.

Eventually you come to develop a feel for these things, but there will always be many that you get wrong no matter what putative rules to attempt to apply. See the poem included with the linked posting above.

Native speakers have their own ears to guide them: having heard the words spoken long before seeing them written, they usually know what a word sounds like already before they actually see it. If you spend more time listening to English, this will become easier than if you only read it.

In isn’t quite as difficult as learning a different pronunciation for each sinogram one encounters, but it is probably harder than in any other language that uses the Latin alphabet. You really do need to look things up in a quality dictionary, for there are otherwise too many surprises that will confound any possible attempt at applying a finite set of rules to them.