Just some thoughts on language: My very good friend and former colleague Jules Yobwoc said, Im the kind of Trainer who doesnt believe in Anne Cook. Most call centers use her accent training materials. Her approach is too American. Her anecdotes are not relatable to Filipinos. They only work great for native speakers. She said that theres no difference between /ɔ/ and /ɒ/ just because some American regional accents blur the lines between these circumflex and long vowel sounds. It may be true to some words like call, tall,ball, doll, caught, brought, long, hot. You hardly notice the difference. So, what will you use for north, chord, horde, bored without the /ɔ/? When training Filipinos on the American Accent, those two vowel sounds I mentioned should be distinguished from each other. For the sake of a healthy discussion, my rejoinder: This argument, however, hardly comes to those who prescribe rules in language instead of just describe the language. Whether they are the same or different is hard to prove if you take these sounds in isolation as you will only notice their difference or sameness in certain environments. By environment I mean the sounds that surround a particular sound. Take for example the initial sound in the words cook and keep. You will agree with me if I say that the initial /k/ in cook is the same as the /k/ in keep. On the surface, yes, they are one and the same. However, if you pay close attention to these sounds you will notice that they are two different allophones of the same phoneme. Try to say cook in your mind but say keep instead or try to say keep in mind but say cook instead and you will notice that these words have different initial sounds. Your tongue moves towards the back for the initial /k/ in cook and towards the front for the /k/ in keep. What must have affected your tongues position in each of these words? Your guess is as good as mine. Its the sounds that follow the initial sound. Notice that the vowel that follows the initial /k/ in cook is a back vowel, hence, your tongues movement towards the back while the vowel that follows /k/ in keep is a front vowel, thus, your tongues movement towards the front. Your tongue anticipates for the next sound even if you are just about to articulate the initial sound. In your own example, the vowels in ball and north may be the same or different. Perhaps they are the same in isolation but different in certain environments. Notice that the vowel in ball is followed by the lateral liquid /l/ while the vowel in north is followed by the retroflex liquid /r/. What affected the vowel in north is the fact that its followed by r, which is phonetically speaking a semi-vowel. So to accommodate this sound, the o in north has to anticipate and adjust to next sound which is technically speaking just another vowel sound. So just before you can relish /ɔ/ inside your mouth, its short-circuited by the semi-vowel /r/.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 03:39:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015