Job Discussion Forums

[Gordon]

A phoneme is a mental representation of a sound, not an actual sound.

[dmb]

[merlin]

I pronounce it with a schwa. Or sometiems I even don't pronounce a vowel at all:
a:You wana la de da de da?
b:/kl/

[Snoopy]

My tutor on the Cert course did not understand the difference between phonetics ahd phonology. It is important to understand why Arabs cannot distinguish between /b/ and /p/, and why the Far Eastern students have the same plobrem with /r/ and /l/. They are allophones of the same phoneme in L1, a phoneme being an item which makes the difference between words, such as brick and plick.

[Snoopy]

Here�s another one for the phoneticians. In my phonetics practical, the final question was to produce a pharyngial fricative (as used in Arabic). I had some difficulty in the exam, but the following day I had a small fishbone stuck in my throat. That�s the way to do it!

[dmb]

Is the 'ch' in a Scottish loch a pharyngial fricative?

[valley_girl]

I'm quite sure the pronunciation of "cool" by an English gent like Leeroy and that by a Canadian gal like myself would be vastly different. I agree with Gordon. My "cool" rhymes with "blue" and "too". (Phonetically = /u/ or /uw/)

Teaching pronunciation is a huge challenge in no small part due to phonetics. There are so many different systems of symbols out there, different regional pronunciations, and even different interpretations, that it can cause a lot of confusion in the classroom. My students seem to have a knack for finding examples, whether in a dictionary, textbook, or online that negates what comes from my dictionary, textbook(s), and online sources. One day, the discussion surrounded the pronunciation of the th in "with" - voiced or voiceless? Students pulled out all sorts of sources in support of both.

[leeroy]

This is interesting!

I have an amateur interest in phonology(or should that be phonetics?).

I understand a phoneme to be on the "interperetation" side of linguistics - i.e. a phoneme is something created by the listener rather than the speaker. In cat and cut, the phonemic differential is created by the person that listens to it rather than the person that makes it. I am all too ready to be told that I am wrong, though...

I remember, during my DELTA coursework, that I was rambling about vowels for a bit. One work that I was referencing from (God Only knows what it was Now) made the point that we classify phonemes in much the same way as we define social classes; You might say "He's left-wing and working class" like it is some kind of absolute, when in fact that class system is liquid and gradual - you are not "Middle-class" exactly, rather you are middle-class to a greater or lesser degree. The same thing exists with (ahem) phonemes - a vowel sound is not exactly /ae/, rather it is something resembling it (to a greater or lesser extent).

In "Standard British English", "hut" and "hot" are quite different. In Standard US English, they are much more similar (though not identical!).

When an American says "I'm hot!" - it is probably not the phonemic difference that enables me to infer from his/her statement that they are affected by heat - rather it is contextual. ("I'm hut" is not only grammatically incorrect, its semantic meaning is bizarre to the point of it being implausible) So, is the "o" in "hot" a phoneme at all?

[Gordon]

So Leeroy what was the point you were making?

You're right though about the differences with English itself. I've just been studying this in my Masters and I had to write out a phonetic script from a tape of a Thai speaker onto an Australian phonetic alphabet. How am I supposed to know how an Oz would say something. I'd call my friend and say "how would you say ______". A bit silly. Now look who's rambling, it is contagious.

[dmb]

this is an interesting thread.(Had any more dreams lately, Leeroy?) Can we just clear up the definitions of phonology and phonetics.

Phonetics- the study of the nature, production and perception of sounds of speech.

Phonology- the study of the sound systems of an individual language and of the nature of such sound systems.

So if the above is true. The relation of phonetics and phonology is problematic.One could argue that phonetics is not part of linguistics because you can study the physical and other mechanisms without reference to their conceivable expoitation in speech.

While we are on the topic can anyone explain phonetics when it is divided into acoustic phonetics and articulatory phonetics?

[Snoopy]

Acoustic: how the sound is heard.
Articulatory: how it is produced.