Learn English – How to pronounce names

/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!

This is a tricky question, because the answer from a pure phonetic perspective doesn't match the perception of most native English speakers. (Either British or American.)

In the phonological perception of native English speakers, the three allomorphs of the plural -s suffix are /s/, /z/, and /əz/. /z/ occurs after the final /l/ of 'apples', making singular /'æpəl/ into plural /'æpəlz/. As a native speaker of American English, I thought this was the whole story until I studied phonetics. If you ask other native English speakers, they will most likely agree that 'apples' ends with a /z/ sound.

From a pure phonetic perspective, the actual pronunciation of word-final /z/ in English often has very little voicing. This is surprising if you're expecting /z/ to be voiced and /s/ to be unvoiced. Since word-final /z/ may have very little voicing, as an English learner you might mistake it for /s/.

In typical speech, a big phonetic difference between word-final /s/ and /z/ is in the length of the syllable. Syllables ending with /s/ or another unvoiced obstruent are pronounced with a much shorter vowel, compared to syllables ending with /z/. In other words, native English speakers would only perceive a word like 'apples' as ending with /s/ if the pronunciation of the preceding /əl/ were very short.