UNIT 2,THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH,POEM OF ENGLISH,Dearest creature in creation,Study English pronunciation.I will teach you in my verseSounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.I will keep you, Suzy, busy,Make your head with heat grow dizzy.Tear in eye, your dress will tear.So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.,(follows),Just compare heart, beard, and heard,Dies and diet, lord and word,Sword and sward, retain and Britain.(Mind the latter, how its written.)Now I surely will not plague youWith such words as plaque and ague.But be careful how you speak:Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;Cloven, oven, how and low,Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.,(follows),Finally, which rhymes with enough tough, through, plough, or dough, or cough?Hiccough has the sound of cup.My advice is to give up!,GENERAL ISSUES,COMPLEX NATURE OF THE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEMDIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN SOUNDSVARIETY OF ENGLISH ACCENTS therefore A KNOWLEDGE OF PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY IS EXPECTED FROM UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND WILL PROVE TO BE BENEFICIAL TO THEIR PRONUNCIATION SKILLS,ACCENTS OF ENGLISH:NATIVE, NATIVESED, FOREIGN,Accent: the way in which a language is pronounced in a specific geographical areanative: UK , Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canadanativised: where English is a second language (e.g. India)foreign: where English is a foreign language (e.g. Europe, China),The British and the Americans are “divided by a common language”,TWO STANDARDS OF PRONUNCIATION (Compare the BBC and CNN News):RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION, RP, OR BBC ENGLISHGENERAL AMERICAN,Phonetics and phonology,Phonetics: studies the physical characteristics of soundsPhonology: describes the organization of the sound system of a language,The articulators,Graphemes and phonemes,grapheme: a letter of the alphabet (a discrete mark in writing or print) phoneme: a distinctive sound in a language capable of creating a distinction in meaning between two words /d/ dog /l/ log /f/ fog,International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA),a set of symbols used for representing the phonemes and sounds of all languages the phonetic transcription of words is provided by bilingual and monolingual dictionaries phoneme symbols are enclosed within slant brackets / whereas the phonetic transcription of words is enclosed in square brackets ,TWO USEFUL WEBSITES,http:/www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/ the website of the BBC World Servicehttp:/www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ The website of The International Phonetic Association (IPA),No one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, e.g. cut, nice, ocean/k/ in cut /s/ in nice / in ocean e.g. come , home/ in come / in home ,Silent graphemes,castle, Christmas, often know, knock walk, talk, folk in write, wrong debt, bomb, doubt psychology , psalm,Homophones and homographs,aloud( ad alta voce) and allowed (consentito) homophones: words orthographically different but phonetically identical- lead (condurre), lead (piombo) - tear (lacrima), tear (strappare) homographs: words orthographically identical but phonetically different,English phonology,segmental: describes the phonemes of a language and the way they combinesuprasegmental: describes the units larger than the phonemes (syllables, rhythm groups and intonation phrases),Phonemes and minimal pairs,phoneme: a distinctive sound in a language capable of creating a distinction in meaning between two words/s/ / and /t/ sit sit set set sat stminimal pairs: a pair of words which differ only by one phonemekit kt cat kt cot kt caught kt pane pane cane cane rane rane vanevane,PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES,allophone: the different realisations of the same phoneme in different contexts e.g. /t/- aspiration: top - affrication: train - Not fully audible: set - clear /l/: lip dark (accompanied by back resonance) in syllable final position as in hill or before another consonant as in milk ,THE GAP BETWEEN SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION IN ENGLISH,THE ENGLISH ALPHABET IS MADE OF 26 LETTERSTHE ENGLISH PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM (in RP) IS MADE OF 43 PHONEMES,THE ENGLISH ALPHABET 26 LETTERS,a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z,THE ENGLISH SOUNDS:43 PHONEMES,Vowels: Diphthongs: , , , Consonants: p b f v t d k g w,THE ENGLISH SOUND SYSTEM: 43 PHONEMES,Vowels: (bit) (meet) (test) (bad) (are) (but) (sorry) (walk) (book) (pool) (girl) (=schwa)Diphthongs: (I) (day) (boy) ( house) u (go), (dear) , (chair), (poor)Consonants: p b f v (both) (this) t d (show) (pleasure) (chicken) (jam) k g (ring) ,