ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses phonological description of vowels, and talks about triphthongs in English before going on to introduce the concept of cardinal vowels. Cardinal vowels will be introduced because they provide good reference points for describing the vowel inventory of any language and any variety of a language. It is important to point out that vowels play a very central role in English phonology as they occupy the nucleus of a syllable. Cardinal vowels were first introduced by Daniel Jones with the purpose of providing a means to describe any vowel in any language by being useful and fixed reference points. Cardinal vowels are not meant to be identical to any vowel you would normally find in British or American English but this does not preclude the possibility that they may be identical to vowels found in other languages or varieties of English.
