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Diphthongs are produced by moving the tongue from one position to another. This means that they can be described in terms of a starting point and a target ending point. In North American English, the two possible endpoints are the high lax vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, and in all cases the tongue moves upward to reach the target. It may also move forward or backward at the same time. Table 4.6 illustrates the approximate patterns of movement. Notice that two of the diphthongs have a starting point that is not listed in our monophthong inventory: /a/, which occurs in /aɪ/ (buy) and /aʊ/ (cow). A third one, /ɔɪ/ (boy), starts at the location of /ɔ/, which as mentioned earlier does not occur as a monophthong for many speakers, but may still occur in diphthongs. The remaining two diphthongs are /eɪ/ (bait) and /oʊ/ (boat).

For more information on dialectal differences in English, see Chapter 12.