آواشناسی انگلیسی ( Phonetics & Phonology)

[ballboy]

Here we sort out those with querries about English phonetics, phonology and their subdisciplines such as pronunciation, stress patterns, accents, and dialects


If you are to live in an English speaking country, you ought to develope a native-like accent. And to do so, to be au fait with ''Sounds" and with how they are made, Phonetics, can help you a lot

[ballboy]

This topic as I said earlier is to sort out queries, but from time to time, I'll try to provide you with some tips on pronunciation and accent.

When we speak we make a connected stream of sounds known as '' speech''.

knowing how to properly make these small segments of sound is what separates those with a native-like accent and those with one of an outsider.

Going straight to the point, these sounds are divided into two major groups; Vowels & Consonants. Below, I just try to provide a complete list of sounds( vowels and consonants) and postpone their attributes and characteristics until after delving a bit into the world of

fə. ˈne.tɪks

we used to be told back in high school, at least most of us, that vowels are; I,O,U,E...., and that words starting with these Letters must be preceded by the indefinite article ''an''. For example, we say '' a book'' since it starts with the consonant 'b', but we say 'an idea' given that the word

'idea' starts with 'i'. However, whenever one raised words like ' University', our teachers referred to them as EXCEPTIONS!!!!

Well, our teachers were absobloodyloutely wrong. There are in fact no exceptions at all, because It's totally spurious to correspond Letters of alphabet ( a b c d e f g ....) to Sounds of a language ( vowels /æ/ /ɒ/ /iː/ /ɔː/ ...... consonants /b/ /j /; these are two different stories/).

We use letters for writing but sounds for speaking; and as we have 26 letters with which we write, we have around 42 sounds with which we speak.

'b' is a letter of alphabet we use in writing words which have this letter such as, 'book', 'rib', 'bad'. But when you say 'b' you make two sounds. In other words, the letter 'b' consists of two sounds, /b/ & /iː/ which together create /biː/. These two are symbols which are referred to as 'Phonemic Symbols' we use in phonemic transcription of words. In the same way, you write ' book' but what you say is /bʊk/; you write university but you say /juːnɪ'vɜːsəti/. As you can see the last word university, the way we say it, starts with the SOUND/ j/ and we know that /j/ ( it's like 'ye' in farsi) is a consonant before which we must use the indefinite article 'a'. Therefore, It's always a university

?Now you tell me which one in each of these pairs is correct

a hotel/an hotel

a historic event/ an historic event

an hour/ a hour

an horse/ a horse

[.Siavash.]

It's as easy as ABC

a hotel

a historic event but in speech,an historic event is the more idiomatic

an hour

a horse

[ballboy]

It's as easy as ABC

a hotel

a historic event but in speech,an historic event is the more idiomatic

an hour

a horse

Your answers are absolutely correct, though my aim of asking such questions was to introduce a common feature of
British English which is known as h- dropping. H-dropping has existed throughout history on and off in various languages, and today in Britain, in majority of dialects we can see the omission of the initial /h/ in words like house/ əʊs / , here/ ɪə /, horse/ ɔːs/. Of recognised accents which do possess this simplifying feature, we can name Cockney and South London dialects. I said simplifying because it is much easier for a learner to drop the h and uses the indefinite article 'an' before such words. Some argue that H dropping in some words lead to auditory ambiguity, as it were, a change in meaning, but looking at the standard BBC Pronunciation, we can see that 'Hour' and 'our' are pronounced in exactly the same way while imparting a whole different meaning



Phonetics of h

.phonologically speaking, h is a consonant since it occurs between vowels in words like ' behave', ' behalf
Phonetically speaking though, when it is said by the speaker or heard by the hearer, it will be gain the qualities of the vowel it precedes. In words above, /h/ is like /ei/ and / ɑː/, the vowels that follow it. Therefore, it is quite justified to drop the /h/ sound and treat the words in the previous post as words starting with vowels

an hotel
an historic
an hour
an horse

[heyboy2009]

Do you know a software that instruct American phonetic?

[ballboy]

There are a number of programs used in study of phonetics though they are mainly used in phonetics labs to analyze spectrogram diagrams and orthographic transcription of records, and function independent of American or British English
But, if by American phonetics , you mean an instructive software to teach you American accent, Rosetta Stone is one of the most utility software programs
Don't trust such commercial products though. Despite the putative belief that Phonetic Transcription is outdated, It's still the most effectual means of training your tongue and other participators for proper pronunciation

[heyboy2009]

There are a number of programs used in study of phonetics though they are mainly used in phonetics labs to analyze spectrogram diagrams and orthographic transcription of records, and function independent of American or British English
But, if by American phonetics , you mean an instructive software to teach you American accent, Rosetta Stone is one of the most utility software programs
Don't trust such commercial products though. Despite the putative belief that Phonetic Transcription is outdated, It's still the most effectual means of training your tongue and other participators for proper pronunciation

Check this site [ برای مشاهده لینک ، با نام کاربری خود وارد شوید یا ثبت نام کنید ]
That's about british phonetics but American phonetic is somehow different(like O pronunciation). Do you know a website for American phonetic?

[a2z]

hi guys,
could you introduce me a free software which can check my pronounciation(American accent)
thank you very much