Phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet

Short vowel Long vowel
i (bit)
ii (beet)
e (bet)
a (cat)
aa (cart)
o (cot)
oo (caught)
u (pull)
uu (pool)
ə (collect)
əə (curl)
Some of the short vowels may also be combined with /i/ (/ei/ bay, /ai/ buy, /oi/ boy), with /u/
(/au/ bough, /ou/ beau) or with /ə/ (/iə/ peer, /eə/ pair, /uə/ poor). The vowel inventory of
English RP in MacCarthy's system therefore totals only seven phonemes. Analyses such as
these could also posit six vowel phonemes, if the vowel of the final syllable in comma is
considered to be an unstressed allophone of that of strut. These seven vowels might be
symbolized /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, /ʌ/ and /ə/. Six or seven vowels is a figure that would put
English much closer to the average number of vowel phonemes in other languages.
[114]
A radically different approach to the English vowel system was proposed by 
Chomsky
and
Halle
. Their 
Sound Pattern of English
(
Chomsky & Halle 1968
) proposed that English has lax
and tense vowel phonemes which are operated on by a complex set of phonological rules to
transform underlying phonological forms into surface phonetic representations. This
generative analysis is not easily comparable with conventional analyses, but the total number

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of vowel phonemes proposed falls well short of the figure of 20 often claimed as the number
of English vowel phonemes.
A. Five-consonant codas are rare, but one occurs in angsts /æŋksts/. See 
list of the longest English
words with one syllable
 for further long syllables in English.