LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 10 : 3 March 2010
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.

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The Unpredictability of the Sonority of English Words

Arun K. Behera, Ph.D.

Pronunciation Difficulties Generated by English Alphabet

Learning/teaching English pronunciation is not easy as far as sonority is concerned. One of the immediate factors is the lack of correspondence between the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds of English. There are at least 44 sounds or phonemes as against only 26 letters. The result is: nonnative speakers (L2 speakers or foreign language learners) find it hard to bridge the discrepancy between sounds and spellings.

Misinterpretation of the Spelling System - A Major Cause

Often, a nonnative speaker's difficulties with pronunciation originate from a misinterpretation of the spelling system rather than difficulty with the pronunciation of the sounds. A learner who expects the letter b to be pronounced / b / as in the words bat, robin, cab etc. will be uncomfortable to find that it is not pronounced that way in words like doubt, tomb, etc. in which case the letter b is silent.

There are, of course, cases where one can, to a large extent predict a certain letter or set of letters to behave in a particular manner. The letter h, for example, is silent in words like honest, humble, heir etc. Or the letter k is silent in words like knife, know etc. But that again is not a regular phenomenon so as to be generalized.

Problems Caused by Silent Letters

Silent letters, thus pose no less threat to those learning pronunciation of English. It is the unpredictability of the sounds vis-à-vis the letters that put the learners fumbling. He or she can't make out which letter(s) becomes(s) silent. There is no pattern or paradigm as such to give any clue to those learning English pronunciation. Thus, for example it becomes tough for the nonnative speaker to appreciate how a particular letter c loses its sonority in words like Czar, indict, scene etc.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

The Linguistics of Newspaper Advertising in Nigeria | Women in Advertisements | Case-Assignment Under Government in Modern Literary Arabic | Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Very Young Learners: A Case from Turkey | Association of Self Fashioning and Circumstances in Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin | A Moral Lesson, Amoral Lesion - Sharon Pollock's The Komagata Maru Incident | Pariksha: Test by Prem Chand | Treatment of City in Nayantara Sahgal's Storm in Chandigarh | Phrasal Stress in Telugu | Stress Among ELT Teachers: A Study of Performance Evaluation from a Private Secondary School in Haryana | Willa Cather’s Portrayal of the Pioneer Virtues in Alexandra Bergson with Reference to O Pioneers! | Man-Woman Relationship in Nayantara Sahgal's Mistaken Identity | Classroom Management and Quality Control - An Action Research | Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha - A Dualist Spiritual Journey | Impact of Dramatics on Composition Skills of Secondary School English Language Learners in Pakistan | Narrative Technique, Language and Style in R. K. Narayan's Works | Diasporic Crisis of Dual Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake | To Teach or Not to Teach Grammar isn't the Question Any Longer - A Case for Consciousness-Raising Tasks | Cognitive Flexibility in Children with Learning Disability | Coda Deletion in Yemeni Tihami Dialect (YTD)- Autosegmental Analysis | The Enigmatic Maya in Anita Desai's
Cry, The Peacock | Developing an English Curriculum for a Premedical Program | The Ties of Kinship in Rohinton Mistry's Novels | Indian English: A Linguistic Reality | The Unpredictability of the Sonority of English Words | Women's Representation in Polity: A Need to Enhance Their Participation | Nandhini Oza's Concern for the Tribal Welfare in "The Dam Shall Not Be Built" | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF MARCH 2010 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT | HOME PAGE of March 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR

Arun K Behera, Ph.D.
Department of English
Sri Sathya Sai University
Bangalore-560 067
Karnataka, India
arunbehera_65@yahoo.co.in

 
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