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BRITISH DIPHTHONGS |
| Move mouse over the phonetic symbols to listen to the pronunciation. |
The most important thing about diphthongs in English is that they are not simply two vowels that go together, but one long vowel where the pronunciation changes from the beginning to the end. To be more precise, the pronunciation changes a bit at the end. Long vowels have the same sound at the beginning and at the end, dyphthongs change at the end:
- long vowel: 
= /ɑ ɑ ɑ /
- diphthong: 
=
/ ɑ ɑ ɪ /
The same thing counts for triphthongs, only that we have not one change of sound at the end, but two.
- triphthong: 
= / ɑ ɑ ɪ ə /
But in modern English, both in America and Britain, triphthongs are changing into diphthongs, with only one last change:
NOTE: Some people go one step farther and change them into one single long vowel, so both triphthongs can be pronounced:
.
For people who pronounce triphthongs like this, the pair of words "far - fire" or "tar - tower" sound exactly the same; don't
do this if your pronunciation of English is not as fluent and precise as that of a native speaker (or else it might be too
confusing).
This is the table with modern diphthongs and triphthongs:
| SYMBOL | 
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| NAME | day | fine | boy | house | phone * | beer | chair | hour | fire |
| REAL PRONUNCIATION | 
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* 
the diphthong in PHONE sounds different in American English (and some varieties of British English like Scottish, Irish, northern English, etc). The first part of the diphthong does not sound like
, it sounds
, which
is very similar to this combination: 
. The rest of the diphthongs and triphthongs are similar in both
varieties of English.
Remember that diphthongs in English are not "vowel+vowel", but one long vowel with a little change at the end.