The Importance of Phonetic and Phonology

594 Words3 Pages
THE IMPORTANCE OF PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGY ENGLISH Why should we teach English phonetics and phonology? Unlike most European languages, English is not a phonetic language: words can have identical vowel letters and be pronounced in different ways, e.g. great, treat, and threat; viceversa, words with phonologically identical vowels may have different spellings, as in sea, seize, precede. Hence the importance of teaching both pronunciation and spelling. If we go down to the phonetic level, English appears to be idiosyncratic too, since it includes various features that are unusual from the point of view of universals: 1. A large and elaborate vowel system including complex processes of length alternation and weakening (think of compete, competitive and competition). Maddieson (1984) has estimated that only 4.1% of the world's languages have over 17 vowel sounds. RP, for instance, has about 20, which makes its system one of the less common and more complex types. 2. A consonant system that includes dental fricatives - not very common sounds in the world's languages (see John Wells's blog here) - and voiced sibilants, which tend to be problematic for many learners. 3. Word stress placement that is free, i.e. arbitrary and frequently unpredictable. 4. An intonation system that seems to be more complex and to have a much higher functional load than that of most other languages. It is because of such considerations that some have argued that for international purposes we ought to use Esperanto rather than English. For reasons that I'm not going to discuss here, this has never worked and English has become the language we use internationally. Nowadays, everyone is expected to speak a bit of English, but trying to find someone in Italy who can speak it 'clearly' - intelligibly -, without mangling it, is no easy task at all. That is where
Open Document