What is the difference between sound and spelling? Why is this distinction significant for your language-learning efforts? Describe the phonetic inventory of your target language. Are there sounds in your language that don’t exist in American English? If so, provide several words and their phonetic transcriptions as examples to support your argument. What do you need to know about the sound system of your target language? How will you acquire the ability to discriminate differentiated segments in your listening, and to produce these sounds in your speech?
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
Replies
There is an obvious difference between sound and spelling when examining words like pterodactyl or gnat. Although both these words are spelled with a consonant, in the beginning, neither of these consonants is actually pronounced when saying the words out loud. This distinction is very important when learning most languages as this teaches you that it is important to learn both pronunciation and spelling of a language because one might mislead you. There are many sounds in the Korean language that don't really exist in American English. For example, ㄲ, ㄸ, and ㅃ produce sounds that can't really be written down in the English language. The best attempts to do so would most likely result in "gg", "dd", and a "bb", respectively. In terms of the sound system, I believe one of the most important aspects of the Korean language is to understand that some characters have "double" sounds where you would emphasize the character harder. From the previous example of ㅃ, the sound that this character makes is "double" the sound that you would make for ㅂ. For the most part, I do believe I have a solid understanding of the differentiated segments in my listening and how to produce these types of sounds when I speak Korean. Still, constant use and practice of pronunciation of these Korean letters always tend to help me out whenever my Korean gets rusty.
There is a big difference in that we largely communicate with sound and employ phones and phonetically speak in our languages to talk and spelling doesn't include the large umbrella of phonetics and phonology. It is the main target of communicating so this distinction is important. There are different phonetics and phonology for each language. In Korean, for example, the consonant r/l is "tapped" an is a retroflex tap like Spanish pero and caro in Italian and can sound like a lower l to d sound and sometimes a r with a low d sound. There are a lot of affricates and more voiceless than voiced sounds and diphthongs and and a lot of stops. There are also glides and a lot of approximants. It's more nasal than English and less fricative. There are consonants missing such as f,v and z,x,q and a rounded glide r like row or roar. I already know the sound system as second nature due to me growing up with the language, but I would say there is a lot more sections of intonation in a similar phrase in English. There would be more inflections and patterns of intonation in a small phrase than English. I think I would need to know the different sounds and combination of letters and phones that make a specific diphthongs in Korean and how to employ the four different articulators and the 8 different modifiers for the articulators such as the glottal, pharyngeal, uvular, velar, palatal, alveolar, dental and labial. I know that the glottis is not used much in Korean and neither is the uvular. I will be able to pick up the different sounds and phones and the transcriptions of the sounds I hear through this reading and practicing describing their sounds and how they were made and what phones and what modifiers were used and whether they were used with the 8 modifiers. Korean is pulmonic egressive airstream much like English. I will be able to mimic these sounds and make them my own my practicing by using and speaking words of these different phonetic patterns and speak a variety of them.