LINGUIST 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Articulatory Phonetics, Vocal Folds, Vocal Tract
29 Jun 2017
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Document Summary
English is notoriously messy (say, weight, they) all of these contain the same vowel sound but are spelled differently. English only has 5 letter characters that represent vowels but more than a dozen different vowel sounds. Cough, tough, bough, through, though same sequence of letters but pronounced differently in each word. Single spelling isn"t consistent in the way we pronounce. English is so messy bc it has been influenced by many diferent language, and even modern day english is borrowed from other places like cappuchino. Many different regional varieties of english, uk english diff from canadian. Even variation between indivuduals speaking english, u speak diff when at a job interview or talking to grandma. Speaking and listening are primary- reading and writing are secondary (just bc you speak a lang doesn"t mean you can read and write in it) English is notoriously bad at representing speech accurately, need some way to refer to speech sounds and not to english letters.
