Tag: Phonemes

First Homework: Sound

Welcome to your language journey!

You came here for some support and accountability and here it is, your first homework assignment. I want you to go out and listen to your language.

Sounds

What, no memorization, no worksheets? “Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start.” Your first step is to listen to your language. “What, I won’t understand a word” you might be thinking.

Phonemes

We are indeed starting at the beginning, with the pieces of a language. A spoken language is made up of pieces (phonemes) of sound that when put together become representations of more complex things. The pieces themselves don’t have meaning, but without them nothing does. So first, learn about your phonemes. After you have the pieces, then you can start to put them together to say something. Read through the section on sounds in the Language tab for more information on why this is important. Next, check out opera singer Gabriel Wyner of “Fluent Forever” . He has a fabulous write-up about language and sound.

Check here (https://talkingdictionaries.app/) and here (https://www.eldp.net/here link) or here learnyourlanguage.com/interesting-places-to find some clips of someone speaking your language. Bonus points for children’s programing. Double bonus for songs or rhymes. Comprehension is not the goal right now, just cadence and flow.

Places to find sound clips

https://languageconservancy.org/

http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/region

http://learnyourlanguage.com/Interesting-places-to

Your family

Seasame Street:

Embassy Websites

YouTube covers–Can you sing “Let it Go” from “Frozen” 40+ ways?? Irish, X, X

Sounds of Language

What does your language sound like? Does your language use tones? How many? Is vocal inflection used with questions? When?

Did you know that English has 44 different sounds? Did you know English has 20 different vowel sounds? If you are a native English speaker like me, then that answer is probably, no. Nor did you likely know that these sounds are called ‘Phonemes’. Phonemes are the legos of the language, the parts that are put together to transmit information. We humans were talking long before we were writing so these, rather than letters or characters are really the way a language is built.

The brain is adapted to learn a language via sound. This is how you did it. That is why I am starting our journey with sound.

So what does your language sound like? Does it have dialects?

A language is a living thing. Like all living things it is constantly changing. People move and their languages move with them. Their nicknames and abbreviations came along too. Just like in biology, separation causes a sort of ‘speciation’. First you may have a regional accent, the rules and words are all the same but the particularly the vowel sounds may change a bit. With accents the changes are technically minor. People from Wisconsin have no troubles understanding people from Alabama but they can both likely hear the differences in the others’ speech

After accents a language may develop dialects. Groups have been separated long enough that some words have changed, word order and other grammar rules may also be different. The sound of the language may be noticeably different. At this point native speakers will notice the differences but are unlikely to be unable to understand each other. Dialects can be tricky for learners, to us the “small differences” do indeed sound like another language. If I have learned “Conas atá tú?” in one Irish dialect and someone asks me “Cén choai bhfuil tú? in another dialect I may have no idea that they both mean, “How are you?”. A native speaker would have no difficulties but they would recognize that one speaker comes from the southern part of Ireland and the other from further north.