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. 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)

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
/baʊ/
He was wearing a bow tie.
/bəʊ/

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.
/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/

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.