Chapter 5- The sound patterns of language.

In chapter five which is based on the sounds patterns of a language, Yule starts with adding that each individual person will not pronounce a word in a physically identical manner, for example the word "me". He also stated that the humans vocal tract, of a fairly large or a small person wouldn't be of any difference; hence two physcally different people would inevitably have physically different vocal tract only in terms of size and shape (43). The discription of the systems and pattern of speech sounds in a language is called phonology. It is concerned with the abstract set of sounds in a language that allows us to distinguish meaning in the actual physical sounds we say and hear (44). Yule then talks about the meaning-distinguished sound in a language or a phoneme, and how it is compared or different to an allophone, which would only result in a change of pronunciation of the same word (45). Pages forty six talks about minimal pairs and minimal sets. For example teo words such as pat-bat are identical in form this would be a minimal pair. Words however that are differentiated such as feat-fit-fate-fate would be a minimal set.

My most favorable part of this reading was the Elison. In detail it talks about a word efficiency and transcription. For example the word "and" the [d] sound of this word was not included in the transcription or for instance friendship the word [d] is yet not included. This is said to be a sound segment that might be present only in careful pronunciation (49). I can relate to this section because on a bust day trying to get things done, in the sudden appear of a hi or hello I would talk very fast allowing me to pronounce words without care. Like "hi" would more sound like "i" or hows mum, here you will see that my pronunciation of these words will create a new spelling. Also if you would take the time ti notice high school student or must I say the "hip" young people of our society nowadays would speak in a way that wouldn't be considered the normal way of speaking. I would say from experience it is more organized when we talk to our parents or when we've grown up. My sentence wouldn't include howdi-how you do.


Connecting this chapter to my own language is very common. Since in some words we say you sure wont know how to begin spelling it. We speak a very broken english accent although at most some of our words would sound very british english.

To conclude on a questions; I am not understanding the syllables and cluster part of this reading. Far less for the chart below I am looking for a pattern to understanding but it is very confusing for me.