الصوتيات في اللغة
Phonetics: the study of speech sounds Phonics: the relationship between the sounds of a language and the letters used to represent those sounds Phoneme: basic sound unit of speech Phonemic Awareness: the
understanding that words are made up of individual sounds.It includes
the ability to distinguish rhyme, blend sounds, isolate sounds, segment
sounds, and manipulate sounds in words. Consonants: phonemes where the flow of air is cut off partially or completely
Voiced: the vocal cords vibrate in creating the sound
Unvoiced: the vocal cords do not vibrate in creating the sound
Fricatives: Consonant sounds that are made by the sound of air friction in the mouth.
- Labiodental (lips & teeth): /v/ and /f/
- Dental (teeth): /TH/ and /th/
- Alveolar (front of mouth): /z/ and /s/
- Palatal (roof of mouth): /zh/ and /sh/
Stop: Consonants sound where the air flow is cut short (/b/ /p/ /d/ /t/ /g/ /k/)
Affricates: These are actually made with a combination of sounds, a stop and a fricative. (/j/ and /ch/)
Nasal: Voiced consonant sound where the air flow is completely blocked in the mouth and redirected through the nose. You can feel the vibration in the nasal cavity.(/m/ /n/ /ng/ )
Liquids: /l/ /r/
Glides: /y/ /w/ /h/ /hw/
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Vowels: phonemes where air flows through the mouth unobstructed. a, e, i, o, and u are considered vowels, although vowel sounds can be represented by consonants, as in myth or fly, or a combination of consonants and vowels, as in night.
Long vowels: eg., bait, beet, bite, boat, beauty
Short vowels: eg., bat, bet, bit, bot, but
Diphthong: phoneme where the mouth glides from one vowel sound directly into another.The sound is a diphthong, but for reading instruction only the sounds /oi/ as in boy and /ou/ as in cow are taught as diphthongs.
Schwa: the vowel sound can "disappear" when we elongate a word's sounds, distorting the word's usual pronunciation.
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Consonant Digraph: two consonants together that make one phoneme or sound which is not associated with the constituent letters (ship, chip, phone, laugh).
Vowel Digraph: two vowels together that make one phoneme or sound (bread, need, book, field)
Onset: the beginning consonant sound(s) before the vowel sound in a syllable (cat, treat, chair).
Rime: the vowel sound and any others that follow it in a syllable (cat, sat and fat).
Open syllable: a syllable that ends in a vowel sound, typically a long vowel sound(tiger, hotel)
Closed syllable: a syllable that ends in a consonant sound
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Pronunciation rulesWhen you listen to native speakers, you hear several clusters of
sounds that you can not decipher, which means, you’re not able to make
out what words these sound clusters represent. Although they actually
stand for everyday words that you know very well, these sound clusters
don’t sound like anything you know.
A word is pronounced in one way when it’s uttered in individually
(that’s its ideal pronunciation); however it’s often pronounced in a
slightly different way when it’s spoken in combination with other words.
A non-native English speaking learner finds
spoken word groups like these difficult to understand. This is mainly
because of two reasons:1. The non native speaker has learnt the language predominantly in
its written form and even though we have spoken the language, it has
been done so with the interferences of our native languages. Thus the
non native speaker has accustomed himself to hear a certain
pronunciation of these words and word groups that are different from the
way a native speaker would say them.
2. When it comes to pronunciation training, non native learners, have
been trained to pronounce words individually and not as part of word
combinations. These pronunciations are also often incorrect and to make
things worse, we are not aware or conscious of the intonation, syllable
stress, word stress vital to accurate pronunciation.
Points to remember:• Blank spaces among the words in a written word group have no importance when you utter that word group in connected speech.
• In connected speech, there are no pauses corresponding to the spaces among written words.
• In connected speech, there are normally no pauses between two
neighboring words in a word group (except when you make use of a pause
as a device in overcoming
hesitation or as a device that helps you compose and speak at the same time).
• In general, there are only pauses between word groups, and not between
words. And the words in a word group are spoken as a single, tight,
well-knit unit, having no
gaps among them.
• You can even say that, in speech, a group of words is treated as
equivalent to a single word — and so the spaces you see among the words
(when you write that word
group down) have no relevance at all when you utter them in connected speech.
• Words in English don’t sound the same when they’re pronounced
individually (in isolation) as when they’re pronounced as part of a word
group in connected speech.
• A word is pronounced in one way when it’s uttered in isolation —
that’s its ideal pronunciation.It’s often pronounced in a different way
when it’s uttered in combination with other words — that’s its
pronunciation in practice.
Tongue movement and phonetics • When you utter a consonant or a vowel individually, your tongue gets
into the ideal position that’s required to produce that sound. When you
utter another consonant or vowel after that, the tongue will have to get
back from that ideal position, and then get into the ideal position
required to produce the new sound. This is only possible when you utter
words individually in isolation, because then you’ll be uttering the
sounds slowly, and your tongue will have enough time to move from ideal
position to ideal position.
• But when words are combined (and uttered aloud) in speech, a cluster
of consonants or a cluster of vowels come together, your tongue will
have to move from one position to another in quick succession.
• And in that process, the positions to which the tongue moves will not
often be the ideal positions required to produce the various sounds. So
the consonant sound and the vowel sound the tongue produces in
connected speech will be different from the ideal sounds. (The quality
of the sounds the tongue actually produces thus would depend on the
nature of the neighboring sounds.)
• In English, stressed syllables are normally uttered slowly and
clearly, and unstressed syllables are always uttered quickly and far
less clearly.
• So when you utter stressed syllables in speech, there’ll be time
enough for your tongue to get into the ideal positions required to
produce the ideal consonant sounds and vowel sounds.
• But when you utter unstressed syllables, your tongue won’t have enough
time to get into the ideal positions required in producing those
syllables, because they’re uttered quickly. So when you utter a cluster
of unstressed syllables, your tongue gets into such positions as it
finds easier to get into from the preceding positions, and not into the
ideal positions. As a result, a cluster of unstressed syllables often
sounds different in speech from what it might sound if those syllables
are pronounced slowly one after another.
• As it’s difficult (and sometimes impossible) for the tongue to move
from ideal position to ideal position in connected speech, it only moves
from possible position to possible position, and each consonant and
each vowel in a cluster will have to adjust to the sounds of the
neighboring consonants and vowels. In this process of mutual adjustment,
this is what happens: The sounds of various consonant clusters, vowel
clusters and consonant-vowel clusters become different from their ideal
sounds — because the sounds that the tongue produces are those that it
finds easier to produce rather than the ideal sounds. And that’s not
all.
• Many consonants and vowels even get left out, and are not pronounced.
In other words, in the process of mutual adjustment among neighboring
consonants and vowels, a lot of phonetic simplification (of consonant
and vowel clusters) takes place.
Remember this: The tongue sometimes finds that it’s easier to utter a
cluster of consonants or vowels if it modifies the sounds of some of
them or leave them out altogether (without pronouncing them), and that’s
when all these phonetic changes happen. So if you want to understand a
native speaker of English, you must never expect him to pronounce words
with the same precision as he would if he were asked to pronounce them
individually.
Intonation and fluencyNow as far as fluency development is concerned, we need to note the following points:
• English is a semi-musical and extremely stressed language.
• You should speak English by uttering stressed syllables distinctly and unstressed syllables with far less.
• This contrast between stressed syllables and unstressed syllables is the key to the rhythm of English speech.
• You should speak English in stress-units called “feet”.
• Each “foot” is made up of a stressed syllable which may (or may not) be followed by one or more unstressed syllables.
• The number of syllables a foot has varies from foot to foot within an
idea unit; however you should only take approximately the same amount of
time to utter each foot — no matter how many unstressed syllables a
foot has.
• You should utter stressed syllables at fairly equal intervals of time.
Rules of Syllable Stress in English:There are a few very simple rules about syllable stress:
1. One word has only one stress. One word cannot have two stresses.
If you hear two stresses, you hear two words. However, there can be a
"secondary" stress in some words, but a secondary stress is much smaller
than the main (primary) stress, and is normally used in long words.
2. We can only stress vowels, not consonants.
3. A multi-syllable word has a prominent syllable. This is called a stressed syllable.
4. Stressed syllable is longer in duration, higher in pitch, and louder in volume.
5. Duration is the primary attribute to the prominence of a syllable.
6. Usually 2 syllable nouns (90 %+) have the stress on the first
syllable; 2 syllable verbs (60 %+) have the stress on the second.
7. Except for the compounds, stressed syllables in words with more than 2
syllables never stand next to each other (Stressed syllables and weak
syllables alternate)