Diphthongs: /eɪ/

Diphthongs: /eɪ/, /aɪ/ & /ɔɪ/

A diphthong is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds that occur as a nucleus of a syllable. Since they are two vowel sounds, diphthongs are represented by two vowel symbols. For this reason, diphthongs are different from a composite vowel sound like /ju/ in cue and few. Here the vowel sound starts with the semivowel /j/ and then moves into the vowel /u/. Since composite vowels are composed of a semivowel and a vowel, they can be viewed as being composed of an onset and a nucleus. But diphthongs are fully contained in the syllable nucleus. 

There are five diphthongs in standard American English. They can be divided into two groups based on the final vowel sound, /ɪ/ or /ʊ/. Those ending with /ɪ/ are /eɪ/, /aɪ/ & /ɔɪ/, and those that end with /ʊ/ are /aʊ/ and /oʊ/. 

The production of a diphthong is easy since all you need to do is to start from one vowel sound and then glide into another vowel sound. So for example, for /eɪ/, you begin with /e/ sound and then glide into /ɪ/ sound, and for /aɪ/, you begin with /a/ sound and then glide into /ɪ/ sound, and so on. In this section, we learn diphthongs that end with /ɪ/, and in the next section, we examine diphthongs that end with /ʊ/. 

/eɪ/

/eɪ/ words

These are words with the sound /eɪ/:

 with “a”: 

able, ache, age, ancient, bathe, blame, brake, cake, case, date, escape, face, fade, game, gate, gaze, lake, late, major, male, make, name, pale, place, plate, range, sale, same, sane, snake, spade, stake, state, take, tale, trace, whale

 with “ai”: 

aid, aim, brain, chain, claim, detail, explain, fail, gain, hail, jail, main, paid, plain, praise, rail, rain, raise, remain, retail, sail, snail, Spain, stain, straight, tail, train, trait, wait, wave

 with “ay”: 

day, delay, essay, display, pay, pray, play, say, stay, today, tray, way

 with “eigh”: 

weigh, weighed, weight

 with “au” 

‘Gauge’ is also pronounced with /eɪ/

/eɪ/ homophones

These are homophones:

brake - break 

grate - great 

male - mail 

plane - plain 

rain - reign

sail - sale 

steak - stake 

tale - tail

wave - waive 

waste - waist 

Wales - whales 

weigh - way 

weight - wait 

weighed - wade

 

/ɛ/, /eɪ/ minimal pairs

bet, bait

bell, bail

chest chased

debt, date

edge age

fell fail

gel, jail

gems James

get, gate

hell, hail

led laid

let late

Mel, mail

men main

met, mate

pell, pail

pen pain

pepper paper

quell, quail

red, raid

sell, sail

shell, shale

Snell, snail

sped spade

test taste

tell tale

well, wail

well whale

west waste

wet, wait

when, wane

wren, rain