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 phonetic transcriptions of words 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?
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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.
On first glance, I would say that the spelling and the sound of a word are the same, just different representations of the same idea. After reading the text, however, I see that this isn't necessarily true, especially in languages like English that come from a conglomerate of different sources. Spelling acts as a guide for sound, but not a roadmap. This is especially important to remember while learning Hebrew, as it often doesn't represent vowel sounds in written language, so it's highly dependent on context and learned rules.
Are there sounds in your language that don’t exist in American English? If so, provide several words and their phonetic transcriptions of words as examples to support your argument.
Yes - Tzadik and Chet (below). Tzadik makes a sound in between a t and a z, and Chet makes a throaty "h" sound.
Examples include:
מִצְוָה (mitzvah) צדקה (charity) ; חַלָּה (challah) חופה (chuppah)
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?
I think they key to anything is practice. While I can clearly discriminate between sounds individually, the more I practice listening to different speakers I'll be able to acquire greater differentiation in parsing speech. The more I practice speaking, the better I'll be able to produce the correct sounds.
Spelling is a representation of words while sound is the literal manifestation of a word. This is significant because representations, in their inability to mimic the object of interest one to one, may leave out details. Similarly, when learning a language, the written word does not always lend itself perfectly to actual sounds of the language.
Hangul is the written language of Korean and is extremely phonetically accurate. However when it comes to spelling, there are a good amount of rules that transform the sound of words in ways the same characters wouldn’t in other cases. Diphthongs are built into the Korean writing system in a way I don’t believe is common in the American English use of the latin alphabet. Korean diphthongs are chameleons and though they in theory have set pronunciations, the sound they make in a word is often entirely contextual.
I do not yet have a deep enough understanding of phonetics to clearly contrast the sounds between English and Korean, but a quick internet search reveals that Korean is full of aspirates where English formally has none though some are represented by constant rules. In Korean a word like “등등” (deungdeung meaning etcetera) has a throat guttural sound that shapes the mouth in a way english words typically do not. Another sound that comes to mind is “nyang” in words like “그냥 ” (geunyang, meaning just) which is also a common sound in Korean I don’t find myself making when speaking English.
A major component of gaining proficiency in the Korean sound system will need to focus on learning where and when to stress syllables. Korean generally has more stops and less fricatives than English. Practicing so that my mouth becomes more comfortable adjusting to the shapes of the sound differences will be crucial. As with most aspects of my language learning journey, practice with and exposure to spoken Korean will be my main method of better understanding segments and bases of articulation.
Sound is vibrations or waves that pass through a medium such as air. Spelling on the other hand is more of a guide or written representation of a language. Phonetics by Hudson shows that this distinction is important as spelling although a guide/representation is not always the phonetic spelling. You are not able to learn a language without one or the other.
Korean has 10 vowels, 2 semi-vowels, 11 diphthongs, and 19 consonants. I think most of the sounds in Korena that don't exist in American English come from the diphthongs. There are also more consonants that are not in the American English language such as ㄹ (l or r sound depending on the situation), ㅂ (soft b as in ballet), double consonants (쌍): ㄲ (hard g), ㄸ (hard d), ㅃ (hard b). A simple example is 왜 which means why and is pronounced like 'wae'. Another is maybe 과일 which means fruit and is pronounced like 'gwail'. An example of double consonants is 떡볶이, pronounced 'tteokbokki' which is a very popular rice cake dish in Korea.
One of the things I learned while doing research on the Korean language is that it is a syllable-timed language which means syllables take approximately equal amounts of time to pronounce. This is probably the reason why I have so much trouble with my accent when I have to think about what I'm going to say. I lose that confidence and tend to lengthen my syllable time as I am a bit nervous when speaking. I think getting into that habit of having it more of a reflex rather than having to think about is what I should focus greatly on. That is just gonna have to come with lots of practice and just getting comfortable.
The arrangement of letters in a word is referred to as spelling. Pronunciation, on the other hand, is the manner of articulation or the method of articulating a specific word.
It is important for language learning because sound is the principal means of conveying linguistic form and meaning in the context of language. Spelling is the way a writing system represents language form and meaning - the patterns in the characters used to represent speech sounds, lexical or grammatical objects, or semantic aspects. Both convey meaning but in different ways.
According to asha.org, the phonetic inventory of Korean includes obstruents (stops, fricatives, affricates) that are all voiceless phrase-initially and word-initially in words produced in isolation. Word-medially, /p, t, k/ become voiced. There are no consonant clusters in word-initial or word-final positions. Only seven consonants, /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/, can occur in syllable-final position, and stops are produced as lenis stops (i.e., /p, t, k/), and Korean fricatives and affricates are neutralized to a lenis stop /t/. The liquid /l/ is realized as a lateral in syllable-final position but as a tap or flap in syllable-initial position (e.g. [u-ɾi], English ‘we’). Phonemes in English that are not found in Korean include the following: /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/,/ʤ/, /ɹ/, and /w/.
There are not necessarily sounds that are not present in English, but more of how the sounds are combined. For example, the Korean language has a lot of sounds with d/t that is almost like a cross-over between the two. The word I have most trouble pronouncing is water, which is 물 ("mul") because I am not used to ending my words with a "l" sound. I will acquire the ability to differentiate the sounds by practicing accurate pronunciation and speech.
At an initial glance, I thought there wasn’t much of a difference between sound and spelling besides the medium through which they are represented. After all, the spelling dictates the sound, and contrarily, spelling can be discerned through sound. After reading G.Hudson's Phonetics, however, I can see how this isn’t necessarily the case. Spelling doesn’t directly translate to sound, although it can guide it. This is pretty important, since while learning a language, people often look for patterns and relationships between spellings and sounds, but the fact that there are many variables that affect the end sound may cause hindrances in learning. For example, if I had no knowledge of English, I would be confused as to why naked is pronounced differently to baked. Learning the patterns/relationships/differences between sound and spelling can definitely help with the learning process, and personally would greatly improve both my speaking/comprehension skills.
Regarding my target language, Korean, I think the phonetics are far more straightforward than that of English. There are variations within vowel pronunciations, for example, "의" in 너의(Your) vs 의사(Doctor). In the former, "의" is pronounced like eh, but in the latter it is pronounced like ui. However, generally Korean vowels will be pronounced much more consistently than English, where a vowel's pronunciation is always dependent on its context. The more major variations in Korean pronunciation are from batchims, which are the lower part of a word that determines the ending sound. Sometimes this can directly influence the next words’ pronunciation. There can also be 2 batchims at a time, creating a combined sound of sorts which isn't always intuitive.
There are many sounds that don’t directly exist in English, one I can think off the top of my head is “최근”, which means recent/latest. The 최 part is pronounced “chwe”, which may be foreign to english speakers. Something I find interesting in Korean is how there exists a consonant which may come off as vowel to first time learners - “ㅇ”. This “ㅇ” is a sonorant, and is similar to the letter O in english.
Because the Korean relationship between sound and spelling is relatively straightforward, besides the physical aspect or the memorizational aspect, I think many people learning Korean will find the reading aspect relatively easy. As for me, I want to improve on the niche cases, like pronunciation of words with 2 batchims, and my pronunciation overall. Reading these more complicated pronunciations in articles to understand the context in which these words are more likely to appear, listening to these words being pronounced, and memorizing them will definitely help my understanding/pronunciation to improve further.
I also think the sounds in English can be very confusing because a lot of the time words do not sound how they are spelled. Learning Hebrew has been nice because this is not the case with characters of Hebrew. The language is very straight forward and logical. Each letter has a particular sound and the vowels dictate how that sound is ended.
Spelling is the arrangement of letters in a word. On the other hand, pronunciation refers to how you articulate a word using your diaphragm, tongue, and glottis. This distinction is important since it means that I can’t expect to learn Korean by just reading words and sentences in my head. I need to hear the pronunciation and verbalize it myself in order to get a full understanding of how the language is supposed to sound.
In Korean, there are many sounds that don’t exist in American English. For example, 의지 means ‘will’ or ‘intention’ in Korean. But the 의 part of the word is difficult to pronounce if you are a native English speaker. It sounds like ‘ui’. Another example is ‘신뢰’ which means ‘trust’. The ‘뢰’ part is pronounced like ‘lue’. 계획, which means ‘plan’, is another Korean word that uses the ‘ue’ sound in 획.
Korean has 19 consonants with many different sounds than in English. For example, the long “ee” sound (/i/) as in “beet” and the short “i” sound (/I/) as in “bit”; the short “e” sound (as in “egg”) and the short “a” sound (as in apple); and. “u” (as in “put”), “or” and “er” sounds. I think hearing Korean at home has helped me to mimic the Korean sounds in my speech, but since I speak English around 90% of the time, I need to continue practicing my pronunciation to get rid of my English accent.
Hearing Korean at home is definitely how I learned how to mimic Korean sounds in my speech. I still have a problem where at times when I am reading or thinking too much about what I'm trying to say in Korean, my English accent comes out. But, when I am speaking with more comfort/confidence my Korean sounds very natural.
I think the process of learning a language is important for both practicing spelling and pronunciation together. Personally, it is a little difficult for me to pronounce certain sounds in Korean because it either doesn't exist in my native tongue. But I think training your tongue to make certain sounds will help with pronunciation, which is why they work so well together.
The difference between sound and spelling is substantial. Sounds are the noises and specifically the waves that are made with a person’s mouth. Spelling is a link between letters to make a word that can be articulated. The main difference is that sound is what is literally said to articulate an idea. Spelling is the tool that is used to link letters together to make the words that form ideas. This distinction is very significant because just because a person can make the sounds of a specific language, does not mean they can spell. Spelling is more advanced than the phonetics used to speak a letter. The phonetic inventory of Hebrew is definitely different than English. There are many sounds such as those that are more guttural that are really not found in English. These sounds have definitely been hard for me to grasp and speak. To say the letters Aleph, Hey, Chet, and Resh a guttural sound must be made. These letters are also very commonly used in the language. Because of this, it is important that I learn how to make the guttural sound well so a native speaker does not misinterpret what I mean to say. It is important for me to know that there are these big differences in the sound system of my target language in comparison with English. This is because I will not be able to effectively listen to or speak Hebrew if I always apply the same sounds spoken in English to Hebrew. It is important to change how I say certain sounds to effectively speak the language and respect those whose primary language is Hebrew. I am going to acquire these skills through practice of making the sounds. I will work with my language partner to make sure I understand these nuances. He has also already done a great job of pointing out these phonetic differences to make sure I understand.