The Phoneme and Me

“What you say? Speak slower. I can’t understand.” My sister and I would hear those statements from my parents quite often when we spoke English at home, especially if we spoke it as fast and as stylized as we did with native English speakers at school. There were several instances where the both of us wouldn’t understand how it was so difficult for our family to understand us. Looking at Gussenhoven and Kenstowicz’s articles, I realized how complex and difficult language and speaking really are.

Gussenhoven begins by discussing the anatomy of the organs of speech: the lungs, larynx, vocal cords, glottis, and vocal tract, which all play a role in producing speech. For example, the glottis, found between the vocal chords, can either be closed for a glottal stop, open for voiceless sounds, or narrow. There are three types of manipulations of the vocal cords, or phonation: whisper, breathy, or creaky voice. Whisper voice consists of narrowing the vocal cords to create glottal friction with sounds like [h] in “hat”. Breathy voice uses air as friction during the closing phrase. Lastly, creaky voice requires the vocal chords to be tight. Gussenhoven also discusses the vocal tract (pharynx, mouth, and nasal cavity). Depending on where the tongue or mouth is placed, the constriction can be characterized as pharyngeal (root of tongue at back wall of pharynx), coronal (crown of tongue), or labial (lips). Constriction can also be categorized as sonorants, which include nasals and approximates, or obstruents that consist of plosives, fricatives, and affricates.

Kenstowicz skips the all anatomy of producing sound and focuses more on phonology and phonemes, which are units of sounds that can have variations, or allophones. The example he mentions is /t/ and the eight different allophones ([t], [N], [D], etc.). For example, “hit” uses a glottalized [t], but "hitter" sounds more like a [D]. Though we don’t deem them as important, allophones create so much variation and they play a crucial role in how we understand each other. Kenstowicz notes that these rules are inherited, not taught. Another aspect of speech he mentions is the difference in vowel lengths when put before voiced or voiceless consonants. An example is the different way the vowel is pronounced in “wet” and “wed” because of the ending consonant.

From both readings, I found Gussenhoven’s discussion of tonal languages one of the most relevant to me. Being the child of Laotian parents, Lao was my first language. It is a very tonal language and that made it quite difficult to grasp; there is one word that can be pronounced three different ways to mean either “near”, “far”, or “chicken”. The readings helped me to remember that the difficulty I had learning the Lao language is the same difficulty my parents have with learning and listening to English. It's funny because sometimes I don’t even understand what I’m trying to say.