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

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

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.

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

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)

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 < >)

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

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

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

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

tomb whistle folk Greenwich pneumatic soften dumb honest weigh debt psychiatry column scissors knot comb heir aisle

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

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

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

He took a bow at the end of the concert /baʊ/ He was wearing a bow tie. /bəʊ/

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. /juːs/ /juːz/ 3. You sow the seeds while I feed the sow. /səʊ/ /saʊ/ 4. He’s the lead singer in the group ‘Lead piping’ /liːd/ /led/ 5. What a row from the last house in the row! /raʊ/ /rəʊ/ 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/ /maɪnjuːt/ 10. ‘Look what you’ve done. Now she’ll burst into tears! ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tear her dress’ /tɪə/ /teə/

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

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.