the ups and downs of phonetics; and no I don't mean tone
In answer to the question, "why are you taking Phonetics?" and in an attempt to answer the many questions I have had over the past 6 weeks about what exactly I am learning:
What is Phonetics: Principles of Articulatory & Acoustical Phonetics
This class is an overview of the sounds made in languages all around the world. It equips the students with some tools necessary to analyze languages.
We have learned about the different kinds of vowels: voiced (the standard), voiceless, nasalized, round vs. unround, high vs. low, back vs. front, central vowels (like the schwa . . . most common in the), breathy vowels and creaky vowels to name a few. And for a native English speaker who was taught "a, e, i, o, u," this list (which I believe includes approximately 120+ vowel sounds) is more than a bit overwhelming! When you also take into account that [ i ] represents the 'long e' sound and [ e ] represents the 'long a' sound, you begin to realize how much of an adjustment there is.
We have learned about the different types of consonants: stops (e.g. t, d, b); fricatives (e.g. f, v); sibilants, also known as grooved fricatives (e.g. s, z, the sh sound); lateral fricatives (l sounds that have s/z quality added to them); lateral approximants (e.g. l); afficates (e.g. 'ch,' 'dj'); lateral afficates (like 'gl' in "glue"); nasals (e.g. m, n); approximants (w); flaps (like a very quick b or d, etc); trills (like the r in "pero" in Spanish).
We learned about pitch, intonation, tones and tonal languages. We have learned about ejectives and implosives, where the airflow making the sounds are different. This week we will learn about clicks, which are used in approximately 10% of the world's languages.
And the great thing is: they don't just teach us the symbols for the sounds. They stretch us and require us to not only hear the sounds and write them down, but to read them aloud and to hear them and mimic them back. It hasn't been easy. Many days, it hasn't been fun. But it has been so useful!
Essentially, as I think about all we have learned (in less than 6 weeks!) I am quite amazed. But more importantly, I am beginning to see the practicality of it. Without this basis in phonetics, we couldn't do what we are learning in grammatical analysis (where we are learning how to sort out the data for any given language and describe grammatical features like gender class agreement, morphology, verb tenses, etc) and phonology (where we are learning how to separate and analyze separate sounds into ordered classes and decide which ones need to be represented by separate symbols and which ones are related and used in complementary distribution with one another, thus able to be represented by one symbol).
Today we started our first language learning session in one of my classes (where they are teaching us language learning tools by having us use them to learn a language we don't know . . . I am in the group learning Urdu). As I listened to our language helper speak I could recognize what symbols would represent the sounds and I could hear a couple examples of verb and noun agreement. It was really exciting, not only to begin to learn a new language . . . which I love . . . but also to be able to see how what we have been studying really is useful. It's not just knowledge that I am regurgitating on the tests, it is practical information that I can use.
Today was a great day!
What is Phonetics: Principles of Articulatory & Acoustical Phonetics
This class is an overview of the sounds made in languages all around the world. It equips the students with some tools necessary to analyze languages.
We have learned about the different kinds of vowels: voiced (the standard), voiceless, nasalized, round vs. unround, high vs. low, back vs. front, central vowels (like the schwa . . . most common in the), breathy vowels and creaky vowels to name a few. And for a native English speaker who was taught "a, e, i, o, u," this list (which I believe includes approximately 120+ vowel sounds) is more than a bit overwhelming! When you also take into account that [ i ] represents the 'long e' sound and [ e ] represents the 'long a' sound, you begin to realize how much of an adjustment there is.
We have learned about the different types of consonants: stops (e.g. t, d, b); fricatives (e.g. f, v); sibilants, also known as grooved fricatives (e.g. s, z, the sh sound); lateral fricatives (l sounds that have s/z quality added to them); lateral approximants (e.g. l); afficates (e.g. 'ch,' 'dj'); lateral afficates (like 'gl' in "glue"); nasals (e.g. m, n); approximants (w); flaps (like a very quick b or d, etc); trills (like the r in "pero" in Spanish).
We learned about pitch, intonation, tones and tonal languages. We have learned about ejectives and implosives, where the airflow making the sounds are different. This week we will learn about clicks, which are used in approximately 10% of the world's languages.
And the great thing is: they don't just teach us the symbols for the sounds. They stretch us and require us to not only hear the sounds and write them down, but to read them aloud and to hear them and mimic them back. It hasn't been easy. Many days, it hasn't been fun. But it has been so useful!
Essentially, as I think about all we have learned (in less than 6 weeks!) I am quite amazed. But more importantly, I am beginning to see the practicality of it. Without this basis in phonetics, we couldn't do what we are learning in grammatical analysis (where we are learning how to sort out the data for any given language and describe grammatical features like gender class agreement, morphology, verb tenses, etc) and phonology (where we are learning how to separate and analyze separate sounds into ordered classes and decide which ones need to be represented by separate symbols and which ones are related and used in complementary distribution with one another, thus able to be represented by one symbol).
Today we started our first language learning session in one of my classes (where they are teaching us language learning tools by having us use them to learn a language we don't know . . . I am in the group learning Urdu). As I listened to our language helper speak I could recognize what symbols would represent the sounds and I could hear a couple examples of verb and noun agreement. It was really exciting, not only to begin to learn a new language . . . which I love . . . but also to be able to see how what we have been studying really is useful. It's not just knowledge that I am regurgitating on the tests, it is practical information that I can use.
Today was a great day!
So can you make the clicking sound like African tribal speakers?
ReplyDeleteThat'd be really cool.
--HNM