The Spanish vowels
Spanish has a straightforward vowel system consisting of five vowels: [i], [e], [a], [o] and [u], which can be found in words like piso ‘apartment’, peso ‘weight’, paso ‘step’, poso ‘sediment’ and puso ‘he/she put’.
When a vowel is produced, the main body of the tongue arches upwards toward the roof of the mouth, while the tip of the tongue rests just behind the lower front teeth. The distinct sound of each vowel is determined by the position of the tongue’s highest point, which can be described along both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Vertically, vowels are classified as high, mid or low, depending on how high the tongue is in the mouth. Horizontally, they are classified as front, central or back, based on where in the mouth the tongue arches.
Using this framework, the five Spanish vowels can be represented schematically as shown in Table 1 below.
Table 1 The Spanish vowels
| |
Front |
Central |
Back |
High |
[i] |
|
[u] |
Mid |
[e] |
|
[o] |
Low |
|
[a] |
|
As shown in the table, the vowels [i] and [u] are produced with the tongue positioned high in the mouth. The vowels [e] and [o] are articulated with the tongue at an intermediate height, while [a] is produced with the tongue relatively low and flat. On the horizontal axis, [i] and [e] are articulated with the tongue positioned towards the front of the mouth. The vowel [a] is produced with the tongue in a central position, and [o] and [u] are articulated with the tongue arching towards the back of the mouth.
Vowels can also be characterized by whether the lips are rounded or unrounded during articulation. If you think about the lip position for the vowels in the first syllable of piso, peso, paso, poso and puso, you may notice that [o] and [u] are produced with rounded lips, while [i], [e], and [a] are produced with unrounded lips. However, in Spanish, the feature of lip rounding is not crucial for classifying vowels. Each of the five vowels can be clearly distinguished based solely on tongue height and horizontal position. Therefore, phonological descriptions of Spanish vowels typically do not need to mention lip rounding.