Why is it necessary for a foreign learner of English to study phonetics ?

 

In the Name of Allah,  Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Why is it necessary for a foreign learner

 of English to study phonetics ?

     PRELUDE:

      Sociolinguists advocate that speech is the first linguistic phenomenon prevailing in human communicative system. All languages, without exception, are spoken; however, a few of them are written. Man started to speak before writing or reading. Therefore, the sounds of any language preceded reading and writing. This uncontroversial fact gives rise to the considerable weight of phonetics, and hence the importance of studying phonetics. Phonetics has inevitably come to be a major branch of linguistic studies.

DEFINITION OF PHONETICS:

      Phoneticsis the study or description of discrete sounds. It is the general investigation of the characteristics of speech sounds as they are articulated.

TYPES OF PHONETICS:

  1- Acoustic Phonetics: It deals with physical properties of speech as sound waves "in the air." It measures the frequency or rate at which the sound waves vibrates, i.e. the number of waves for every second of a signal. 

 

 

 

 

 

 2- Auditory (perceptual) Phonetics: It is related to perception of speech sound via the ear. It deals with, more or less, the hearer or listener. 

    3- Forensic Phonetics: It deals with what is called "voice print" which implies the fact that the voice of each individual is uniquely different from any other person's voice, just as the diversity in finger-prints. It has applications in legal cases involving speaker identification and the analysis of recorded utterances.

     4- Experimental Phonetics: It carries out laboratory experiment to discover the tension in muscles that takes place in the speech organs during speaking. This helps in treating biological defects in speech organs.

      5- Articulatory Phonetics: This is concerned with the study of how speech sounds are made "articulated", i.e. it deals with speech mechanism. This is related to speech in general, and it is the most important area of linguistic study.

      Generally speaking, English Language has got 26 alphabetical letters, which have been summed up in the following sentence:

      The quick dogs jumped over the brown lazy fox.

      From these letters emerge 44 sounds in Received Pronunciation (R P) - sometimes called B. B. C. English. 

      There are 5 vowel letters: a, e, i, o, u.

      There are 20 vowel sounds. These happen when the air coming out from the lungs is obstructed.

      There are 24 consonants: These happen when the air coming out from the lungs is not obstructed, i.e. it moves freely without obstruction or constriction.

      Paradoxically, English scholars are quite aware of this deficiency and complications in their pronunciation system, a matter which adds more burden to the spelling system (orthography):

      "English spelling has manifest advantages; yet it is even more unphonetic than French …… thousands of words would be unrecognizable if written phonetically" .See: Simon Potter، Our Language، Harmondsworth، Middlesex، Penguin Books LTD ، pp 73،74 .

      Therefore, this intricate system of phonetics makes it very difficult for the foreign leaner to grasp English pronunciation easily. Unless a learner gets familiar with the peculiarities of English pronunciation, he will not be able to mange speaking properly.

      In other words, there are letters which give different sounds:

             C = s (cinema), k (car);        X = k s;        Q = kw,  ky,  queue .

      A learner often encounters the dilemma of letters or combination of letters without sounds such as: gh in the middle sound of(daughter), bin the final sound of (climb).

      There is anecdote which says that a man who had trouble with spelling sent his kid with a message to a carpenter asking him to make him a (sealgh) for putting his books on. The man took the first sound of the word (sure), the middle sound of the word (dead)

and the final sounds of the word (laugh), to form the word (shelf).

      The tale above serves as a reminder that the sounds of spoken English do not match up, a lot f time, with letters of written English. That is to say, pronunciation, in most cases, does not comply with arbitrary sounds, in the sense that one can not guess the spelling of a word from its pronunciation.

      To solve the problems of pronunciation, English Language has produced a separate alphabet with symbols which represent sounds. Such a set of symbols is called (phonetic alphabet), in which each sound is represented by just one symbol and each symbol represents just one sound.   

      Moreover, this complication in English phonetic system has made it crucial to adopt (stress) or (intonation) techniques to change the meaning of an utterance.

      For instance, let's consider the semantic differences in the following sentences:

    1- She fed her dog meat. The stress here lies on (meat), and the meaning is that she fed her dog (meat) but not (bread).

    2- She fed her dog meat. The stress here lies on (dog), and the meaning is that she fed (her) meat of the dog, but not (beef or bacon or any other type of meat).

      In fact, not only does intonation change the meaning of the structure, but it also changes the function from affirmation to interrogation, to exclamation or any other purpose.

"The speaker of English can easily become aware of the great use of intonation for a whole variety of purposes, largely of an attitudinal kind …… the speaker can express emotion, attitudes, etc." Palmer (F. R.) : Semantics, the sentence, pp 156, 157.

Andrew Radford says:

"….. by changing the tone over the word the speaker changes the attitude he or she is expressing. Thus we move from :  a ) a simple statement to b) a question to c) a strong assertion to d) a matter of fact assertion to   e) an expression of disbelief". Radford : (Andrew) & Others : Linguistics, pp 48, 49.

 

a) eat peas   b) eat peas?           c) eat peas! 

 

d) eat peas e) eat peas?!

 

      That is how some meanings are only determined by intonation and such phonetic characteristics. "The musical pitch of the voice changes during an utterance, giving the characteristic melodies of English language".C. Criper & H. G. Winddowson : Sociolinuistics & Language Teaching  p 150

      There are multiple diphthongs and vowel sounds with so many confusing transcriptions (é  ê  i  o  y  oi  ei   eau   au  ui  u  a  e  ô  ie  ea  ae  iu), and that makes it quite tedious for a learner to differentiate which is which unless he has command of English phonetic system.