PHONETICS AND PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION
- In Telugu and many other languages every letter stands for a particular sound only. So we normally don't find any problem with pronunciation
- English language has only 26 letters. But a single letter may stand for many sounds. So we are confused to understand the logic between spelling and pronunciation and commit many mistakes.
- The only solution to this is learning 'Phonetics
- Phonetics is the study of speech sounds and how they are produced. There are 44 speech sounds in English language.
- Speech sounds include vowels and consonants.
- There are 20 vowel sounds in English. Twelve(12) of them are pure vowels and eight(8) are diphthongs. Diphthongs are vowels produced by a glide from one pure vowel to another.
- There are 24 consonant sounds in English.
- The smallest bit of language that has its own meaning, either a word or a part of a word is called morpheme
- A syllable is the single unit of speech, either a whole word or one of the parts into which a word can be separated
- Stress is the degree of breath-force with which a speaker pronounces a sound or a syllable. Stress is marked in a word by putting a small vertical bar
- Intonation is the sound changes produced by the rise and fall of voice when speaking.
- Pitch refers to the intensity of voice. It refers to the highness or lowness of voice. Women generally have voice with high pitch and men with low pitch.
- Rhythm is the regularity of loudness and softness with different words in a sentence are pronounced.
- Similar sound produced at the end of each poetic line is called rhythm.
