Grammar
- Class Wars
We can't open our mouths without revealing the social class we come from. England is no exception here, possibly even the worst case of a class-obsessed society where everyone is able to tell exactly which social class somebody else belongs to. The...
- Glottal Stop, Clipping And Elision
I got into a conversation with somebody on Twitter yesterday about the phonetic processes. To be truthful, it wasn’t much of a conversation and rather a question asked by them followed by my monologue with possible answers. They wanted to know ‘’what...
- Phonetics Versus Phonology
I've been asked several times already to explain shortly the difference between phonetics and phonology. If you think of it, it's easy. Pronounciation can be always studied and analysed from two different points of view: the phonetic and phonological....
- Phones, Phonemes And Allophones.
The terminology we will be dealing with today may strike you as really complicated. This is always the case with abstract units that you cannot see or touch. I've made every effort for the text to be simple so don't give up before you even try...
- Pronunciation Game Using Ipa Symbols
Practise using IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols with these quizzes. You have a choice of keyboards: one laid out by letter type, the other a sort of (Q)werty board. Try individual sounds or whole words. Use the 'Select...
Grammar
Vowels and Consonants
There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the centre of syllables. Therefore in 'cat', 'book', 'mean' the sounds represented by <c, t, b, k, m, n> are consonants and the sound represented by <a, oo, ea> are all vowels.
To know what kind of sounds generally occur in those different positions in syllables we need a phonetic definition. It says that vowels are median so the air escapes over the middle of the tongue, oral so the air escapes through the mouth and never through the nose which means that the soft palate is raised but I shall talk more about the place and manner of articulation on the other occasion. The phonetic definition also says tat vowels are frictionless (thus excluding fricatives e.g. /s/) and continuant (thus excluding plosives e.g. /p/). Basically all sounds that are excluded from the phonetic definition are consonants.
However, nothing is ever easy in English because /j, w, r/ are consonants phonologically since they certainly occur at the edges of syllables but are still vowels phonetically because they are all median, oral, frictionless and continuant. For that reason we call them semi-vowels.
Another difficulty arises in words like 'little' when the final consonant /l/ (we are not taking into consideration the spelling but the prononounciation) is the syllable on it's own thus must be the centre of such syllable too even though phonetically /l/ is not a vowel. This situation ocurs for laterals (/l/) and nasals (e.g. /n/) therefore laterals and nasals are called syllabic consonants.
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- Class Wars
We can't open our mouths without revealing the social class we come from. England is no exception here, possibly even the worst case of a class-obsessed society where everyone is able to tell exactly which social class somebody else belongs to. The...
- Glottal Stop, Clipping And Elision
I got into a conversation with somebody on Twitter yesterday about the phonetic processes. To be truthful, it wasn’t much of a conversation and rather a question asked by them followed by my monologue with possible answers. They wanted to know ‘’what...
- Phonetics Versus Phonology
I've been asked several times already to explain shortly the difference between phonetics and phonology. If you think of it, it's easy. Pronounciation can be always studied and analysed from two different points of view: the phonetic and phonological....
- Phones, Phonemes And Allophones.
The terminology we will be dealing with today may strike you as really complicated. This is always the case with abstract units that you cannot see or touch. I've made every effort for the text to be simple so don't give up before you even try...
- Pronunciation Game Using Ipa Symbols
Practise using IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols with these quizzes. You have a choice of keyboards: one laid out by letter type, the other a sort of (Q)werty board. Try individual sounds or whole words. Use the 'Select...