Differences Between English And Greek

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WAC Assignment Hara In this essay, differences between English and Greek, which is the native language of the writer, are discussed. Since the writer of this essay speaks Greek as her native language and has already taken some classes concerning Greek phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax, she will present some differences between English and Greek, that make English difficult in some cases for Greek speakers and, especially, for young learners. To begin with, as far as phonetics are concerned, something that differentiates the languages mentioned above is the fact that the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an essential tool for people studying not only English, but also many other languages. Although it is possible to use the IPA alphabet to also come in contact with sounds that are met in Greek, the IPA alphabet does not represent all types of sounds that can be found in Greek words. For example, the sound [x] is presented as a voiceless velar fricative and it is pronounced like this in the word “xionizei” (it is snowing), whereas in the Greek word “xronia” (years), the first sound is not represented by any IPA symbol. What is more, taking into consideration English phonology and comparing it to Greek phonology, it should be stated that both English and Greek have a lot of phonological rules, which present some slight differences between these languages. For example, it is linguistically known that both English and Greek have some assimilation rules, according to which neighboring segments are made more similar by duplicating a phonetic property. For example, in English, a vowel becomes nasalized before a nasal segment, possibly followed by one or two consonants within a syllable. On the other hand, there is no nasalization in the Greek language. In particular, when in a phrase the first word ends in a nasal sound and the second word begins
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