Lesson 2 phonetics and its subject7. Lection 2

phonetics

1. Aims :
Becoming more aware of how and
why we use English sounds
(language awareness, metalinguistic
analysis)
Improving English pronunciation

2. Pronunciation and accent
Do all speakers of a language
pronounce the same words in the
same way?

Ex. It. bicicletta

3. Stress  ‘part of a word’ pronounced with a
louder or longer quality
Accent  different ways of pronouncing a
language (it depends on geographical origin of
speakers, social class, age, educational
background)
Dialect  a variety of a language which
differs from others in pronunciation,
vocabulary, grammar, word order.

4. Geographical origin
British English American English
English Scottish Welsh Northern
Irish
Northern Southern
(e.g. Yorkshire) (e.g.London, Essex)

5. Phoneme inventory
The complete set of phonemes in a language or a
in a particular accent of a language is known as a
phoneme inventory

Phonemes in English represent only a proportion
of all the possible sounds which occur in human
speech (some languages have fewer phonemes
than Eng, others more)

6. IPA

IPA stands for International Phonemic Alphabet

The IPA is used to transcribe sounds, NOT spelling

Notice that there may be no correspondence between spelling
and sound!!!

Dumb  / d, ʌ, m/

Phonetic symbols are written between slant brackets / / (while
letters are written between angled brackets < >)

7. Confusion between spellings and
sounds - 1
beat, seed, piece, machine
/i:/
day, veil, obey
/eı/
shoe, sugar, issue, mansion, mission, nation,
suspicion, ocean, conscious, chaperon
/∫/
one single sound is represented
by more than one letter

8. Confusion between spellings and
sounds - 2
man, glass, name : <a>
/æ/ man, /α:/ glass, /eɪ/ name

cheese, church, cheap, chalet, champagne, Chicago, chic,
character, chemistry, chaos : <ch>
/t∫/ cheese, church, cheap
/∫/ chalet, champagne, Chigago, chic
/k/character, chemistry, chaos

9. Confusion between spellings and sounds
- 3
Some letters may represent no sound at all:
silent letters (examples!)
<b> in subtle, doubt, comb, lamb
<w> in answer
<k> in knife, know, knight
<gh> in bright, light, night
<e> in name, time, goose

10. ‘Have you tried Jamie Oliver’s new
recipe? It’s salmon with almonds!'

11. tomb whistle folk Greenwich
pneumatic soften dumb honest
weigh debt
psychiatry column scissors knot

comb heir aisle

12. 
B  tomb, debt, doubt

C  muscle, scissors

D landline, grandson, Windsor

E  serve…

G foreign, weigh

H hour, honour, honest, heir

K  knowledge, knife

L folk, calf, palm, would

N column, hymn

P  psychiatrist, pneumatic

S  aisle, Illinois, Arkansas

T fasten, chestnut, soften

W whole, Greenwich

13. CONSONANTS
 letter/sound correspondence: <b> /b/ book, <m> /m/
make
one “letter”, two or more sounds:
<th> /ð/ this, /θ/ thing, /t/ Thomas, Thames, Thailand,
Anthony
one sound, two or more letters:
/ʤ/
<j>, <g>, <dg> jam, gem, bridge
/-k/
<k>, <c>, <ck> took, tic, tick
/-s/
<s>, <ss> bus, dress

14. Even in Italian:
a fruit
Pesca
fishing
One letter – two sounds

15. He took a bow
at the end of
the concert
/ba /
ʊ
He was wearing
a bow tie.
/b /
əʊ

16. 1. The girl I live with knows a good pub with live music.
/lɪv/ /laɪv/
2. It’s no use. I can’t use this gadget.
/ju s/ /ju z/
ː ː
3. You sow the seeds while I feed the sow.
/s
ə
ʊ/ /saʊ/
4. He’s the lead singer in the group ‘Lead piping’
/li d/ /led/
ː
5. What a row from the last house in the row!
/raʊ/ /r
ə
ʊ/
6. Does he still suffer from the war wound?
/wuːnd/
7. I wound the rope around the tree.
/waʊnd/
8. It’s quite hard to wind in the sails in this wind.
/waɪnd/ /wɪnd/
9. It only took him a minute to write down all the minute details of
the project.
/mɪnɪt/ /maɪnju t/
ː
10. ‘Look what you’ve done. Now she’ll burst into tears! ‘I’m sorry. I
didn’t want to tear her dress’ /tɪ/
ə
/te /
ə

17. Same sounds, different spelling
-AIR HEIR
-I EYE
-BE BEE
-DEAR DEER
-HOLE WHOLE
-NIGHT KNIGHT
-PAIR PEAR
-SAIL SALE
-WEAK WEEK
HOMOPHONES

18. So…
Phonetics (and phonetic transcription) and phonology
are useful because
on a theoretical level, they can help us
understand the language system – why, for
instance, we do not have certain sounds at the
end or at the beginning of words;
On a practical level, because transcriptions give
us a reliable method to record pronunciation.