Phonemes as a part of all languages - Research Paper Example

? Phonemes Very Interesting! Insert here Insert here This paper will discuss Phonemes, a very interesting and intricate partof all languages. I say all languages because in every language spoken they are different. Most languages even have a variety of dialects that make phonemes even more interesting. I remember a song my grandmother use to sing, “You like po-tay-to, I like po-tah-to”. It was a simple verse to a simple song, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” But its main purpose was to show the humor in different dialects; mostly American vs British back then. This paper will show that it goes even farther and that it encompasses a whole variety of issues, such as our perceptions, our communication, the learning of a foreign language and living and working with disabilities that range from cleft palette to Dyslexia, and aphasia related to strokes. We will also discuss the fascinating way our phonemes are acquired. I just wish I was a kid, this would be so much easier to learn! Phonemes Very Interesting! Throughout this paper I will be attempting to take you on a journey into the world of language and Phonemes in particular. Thinking back and then discussing it with family and friends, we are never actually taught Phonemes; we are taught Phonics, word sounds and symbols that help you learn among other things, long vowel sounds and which part of the word to emphasize. Phonemes concentrate more on individual letters and the way their sounds change depending on the word for example: pie and apple, note how the P sound is different in each word. Needless to say this makes speaking not as easy a task as you might thing. To show this, I will be writing about: how we connect perception with phonemes, how we acquire them, their importance in language and communication, and their effect on people with disorders, along with how they may affect an individual trying to learn a new language. When we connect perception with phonemes we can learn a lot from dialects right here in America. Each state has its own unique acoustic; some being quite stronger than others, “Wow, you have a thick accent”. Southern drawls, New England and New York accents are amongst the strongest and well known. No matter where you are in the World, a person’s perception of you is cued by your accent. How often have you heard someone say, “You must be from New Yawk”, or “You sure aren’t from around here, where yawl from”? Then of course there is New England’s seeming lost letter, “R” as in Motha and Fatha. These are all examples of how we are perceived through our individual dialects. It is actually amazing when you think about it that any of us can even read, for few of us ever say the word the way it is spelled. Phonemes are acquired by a combination of the “ROTE” method, repetition as in 1, 2, 3, or A, B, C, and the gradual acquiring of the speech sound system. The speech sound system is discussed in depth in a paper penned by Caroline Bowen, 1998, entitled, “Typical Speech Development: The Gradual Acquisition of The Speech Sound System”. In this paper Ms. Bowen explains and shows through charts exactly how a child’s language develops. The phonological process is made up of ten (10) steps that a child normally attains by age five (5); there are some exceptions. For example, sounds can only be imitated and voiced when heard, therefore a child who has been born with a hearing impairment more than likely will not attain this level by age five (5), and perhaps never. The ten (10) steps are: context sensitive voicing (pig is big), word-final devoicing (red is ret), final consonant deletion (home is hoe), velar fronting (kiss is tiss), palatal fronting (ship is sip), consonant harmomy (dog is gog), week syllable deletion (telephone is teffon), cluster reduction (spider is pider), gliding of liquids (real is weal), and stopping (funny is punny). (Bowen, 1998) “In contrast to their immature visual system, young infants possess a relatively mature auditory system that enables them to detect subtle acoustic–physical differences in sounds. In addition to simple sound changes like pitch and intensity, they can discriminate a wide variety of speech sounds (phonemes) used in languages, including those that they have never heard”. (Yasuyo Minagawa – Kawai, Koichi Mori, Nozomi Naio and Shozo Kojima, 2007) When it comes to language and communication it isn’t hard to understand the importance of Phonemes. Of course if we all said ship as sip, I suppose we would all understand one another and our communication skills would be fine. To quote Juan Rosas from his article entitled, “English 311, Introduction to Linguistics”, “First of all, phonemic awareness is “the ability to hear the individual sounds that make up words; and understanding that speech is composed of individual sounds”. (Rosas, n.d.) Therefore, if we do not hear the sounds and understand them, how can we communicate? Without communication there is no language, without language there is no communication. Simply stated communication and language are like peanut butter and jelly, without one the other just isn’t as good. We can relate this to someone who is bi-lingual. You speak French (Peanut Butter), I speak English (jelly); our professor speaks French and English. Our professor is PB & J. The reason for this analogy is to show the importance of communications and language both based on our abilities to use the phonemes we learned as a child. We are unable to communicate, oh sure, we could draw cave pictures, but why not bring in PB & J. Together we are great, alone we cannot exist. We could try and fake it, but there are too many phonemes learned as a child; unless the other language is learned, communication is nearly impossible. I will use the letter “t” as an example. In many French words “t” sounds like “ch” so text would become “chex”, in a lot of French words the “t” on the end is silent, as in “ballet”. This is one of the reasons phonemes are so important when it comes to language and communication and why often times they can affect people trying to learn a new language. It has been said throughout history that languages are best learned as a child; but why? Perhaps it is the newness of it. As young children, sounds are new to us. We have not yet spoken them or heard them enough to have them settle in and become a part of our very being. In a bi-lingual home, as the child starts acquiring their speech sound system, they learn to say the English “t” as well as the French “t or ch”, it becomes as natural for them as speaking only one language is for non-bi-linguists. So natural in fact that often during conversations they jump back and forth from one language to the other, utilizing which ever rendition of the word comes as more of a second nature to them. It is an accepted fact that the younger the child, the easier it is for them to learn a second language. Children are able to understand words and hear small sound differences that adults often miss -- making understanding more difficult for adults. For example, Polish students of English have difficulty differentiating between vowels such as "pen" and "pan" while German students must learn to hear a difference between the v in "vest" and the w in "west". (Iverson, 2005) “Accented speech recognition is more challenging than standard speech recognition due to the effects of phonetic and acoustic confusions. Phonetic confusion in accented speech occurs when an expected phone is pronounced as a different one, which leads to erroneous recognition. Acoustic confusion occurs when the pronounced phone is found to lie acoustically between two baseform models and can be equally recognized as either one. We propose that it is necessary to analyze and model these confusions separately in order to improve accented speech recognition without degrading standard speech recognition”. (Fung, P. Liu Y. 2005) The largest area where the importance of phonemes is present is their affect on children and adults with disorders. The list of disorders is great and I will touch on a few. First, we will cover deafness. Children born with either impaired hearing or total deafness are never able to distinguish the different sounds of the phonemes around them. Often, they are only able to make guttural sounds which they themselves cannot hear but rather feel through the vibrations in their vocal cords. One of the most enduring traditional oral techniques in teaching speech to deaf people has incorporated the use of both sight and touch in the learning process. This process involves the instructor placing the hand of the student on the instructor’s throat while forming specific words. The student learns how the lips move when a word is formed, and also get a sense of how the muscles in the neck move when a particular word is formed. (Wise Geek, n.d.) Dyslexia is another disorder, which at first was thought to be seeing letters backwards or reversed. I found a report on Humanillnesses.com that says: “Researchers originally thought that visual and motor problems were at the heart of dyslexia, but they later found that reading disabilities stem from a difficulty with processing the smallest units of language, which are called phonemes. For example, the "p" of pat and the "f" of fat are two different phonemes, and the word fat has three phonemes linked together. Someone with dyslexia might have trouble telling the difference between these sounds when reading them. (University of Minnesota @ Duluth, n.d.) Many children are born with a congenital defect known as Cleft Palate. A Cleft Palate occurs during the sixth to tenth week of pregnancy when the tissues of the mouth for some reason don’t fuse together. When this happens, phonemes that require intra-oral pressure are affected: stops, fricatives and affricates. Vowel sounds are often nasal and individuals develop compensatory articulations. “Dysarthria” is another name for slurred speech. Slurred speech is the result of paralyzed or weakened muscles often a result of a stroke or brain injury. Depending on the underlying cause, some Dysarthria may be helped with speech therapy. A “Lisp” is a functional speech disorder associated with children causing them to have difficulty making a certain speech sound or specific speech sounds, “s” and “z”. Functional means that there is no know origin for the disorder. Lisps can stay with you into adulthood but can be treated with motivated children and adults. Some lisps are associated with missing your two front teeth and will go away once your teeth return. There are four types of Lisps: the “Interdental or frontal lisp”, where the “s” and “z” often sound like “th”. The tongue protrudes between the front teeth and air is pushed forward, usually disappears by four and a half or an SLP assessment should be done. The “Dentalized lisp” is more of an expression than a term and appears when the tongue rests on or pushes against the front teeth and air flows forward causing a muffled sound. This type too usually resolves itself by age four and a half or an assessment should be considered. “Lateral or slushy “ess” lisps” are not typical and should be assessed when discovered. “Palatal lisps also are not typical; they are caused by the center of your tongue resting against the palate (roof) of your mouth toward the back and should be assessed. (Bowen, 1999) Speech Therapy will help with most if not all Phoneme issues. Some ideas you as a parent can implement to help your child with his/her speech are; Rhyming games, tongue twisters, “word” flash cards, and reading. While reading to your child, have them repeat after you the words they see. This way they are using, auditory as well as visual stimuli to help them to associate the word with sound and sight. Many speech therapists today are encouraging some form of signing with your child even if they don’t have a hearing problem as it encourages communication. In conclusion we have discussed many facets of Phonemes and their importance in the world of language and communication. Without Phonemes we would literally be thrown back to the caveman era of grunts and other strange sounds as a form of communication. We have discussed the perception of, and how right here in the United States, the evidence of phonemes and their perception thereof are as varied as our distinct dialects. We have discussed how they are acquired through the Speech Sound System along with ROTE or repetitive training. We have learned their importance when it comes to language and communication and the need to hear the sounds in order to reproduce them. We have learned how they affect learning new languages related to accent sounds and the varying ways letters are enunciated in that particular country. We have learned about the numerous disorders that affect our speech and our ability to use Phonemes such as Deafness, Dyslexia Lisps and Cleft Palate. As we have learned, Phonemes are ever present in our daily lives. They are there even if we didn’t know it. Without them, well we would all be “Speechless”. Cited Works Bowen, Carolyn. (1998). Typical Speech Development, The Gradual Acquisition of the Speech Sound System. Web. 28 July, 2011 Bowen, Carolyn. (1999). Lisping, When “s” and “z” Are Hard To Say. Web. 28 July, 2011 Fung, P. Liu, Y. (2005). Effects and Modeling of Phonetic and Acoustic Confusions in Accented Speech. Web. 28 July, 2011 Rosas, Juan. (n.d.). English 311, “Introduction to Linguistics”. Michael Buckhoff’s ESL website for students and teachers. Web. 28 July, 2011 Iverson, Paul Dr. (June 15, 2005). Science Daily, Adults Can Be Retrained To Learn Second Language More Easily, says UCL Scientist. Web, 28 July, 2011 Wise Geek. (n.d.). How Do Deaf People Learn To Speak Aloud?. Web. 28 July, 2011 Yasuyo Minagawa – Kawai, Koichi Mori, Nozomi Naoi, and Shozo Kojima. (2007). Neural Attunement Processes In Infants During the Acquisition of a Language Specific Phonemic Contrast. Web. 28 July, 2011 Read More