ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION AND ITS RELEVANT PROBLEMS

PRONUNCIATION AND ITS RELEVANT PROBLEMS

Pronunciation

Pronunciation is the making of sounds of speech, it is the way in which a sound, word, or language is articulated. Synonyms of pronunciation are articulation, elocution, intonation, enunciation, diction, accent and phonation etc.

Phonetics is branch of linguistics concerned with the production, physical nature, and perception of speech sounds. The main fields of study are experimental phonetics, articulatory phonetics, phonemic s, acoustical phonetics, and auditory phonetics.

Received Pronunciation

A pronunciation of British English originally based on the speech of the upper class of southeastern England and characteristic of the English spoken at the public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge Universities is called Received Pronunciation. It also is the standard form of English used in British broadcasting.

Mispronunciations and Miscommunications
            Everyday, millions of conversations takes place. Many such communications result in misunderstanding leading to frustration and inefficiency. Such floundering communications can lead to loss of time, loss of money, and loss of goodwill. Even more significant, in life and death situations such as calls to emergency personnel, such communication failures can be life-threatening.

Different pronunciations and their reasons

People often pronounce words one way or the other than how they are intended to be pronounced. Although some words do have a bit of variety in their pronunciation, meaning two or more possibilities are still correct, there are definite ways to say words imperfectly. Some of the likely reasons for mispronunciation are reading difficulties, nonstandard spellings, local or regional mispronunciations and hearing problems. All of the above can deviate people from the standard pronunciation. Reading is a complex task that involves translating of abstract symbols, or letters, into meaningful sounds and patterns that have meaning outside themselves. People often have difficulties with reading and understanding words because it is complicated. When this happens, they also can have trouble correctly pronouncing the words they are attempting to read. Even if they know the meaning behind the word, they may not be able to pronounce it the right way. Nonstandard spellings are another reason for mispronunciation. In English and other languages, there are many words that, if spoken phonetically or the way they are written then they would be mispronounced. The word “rough”, for example, might be written as “ruff” if it were to be written as it is pronounced. The English language, as an example, is a complex language based on different languages and, thus, has variant spellings of words.  Homophone as mentioned below are often mispronounced if due care is not paid to them.

Homophones

Homophones are words that sound the same, but have different meanings and different spellings.  Examples of homophones, include “to, too, and two”, and “ hear and here”.

Non native pronunciations of English

Resultant  from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native users of any language  tend to carry the intonation , phonological  processes and pronunciation rules from their mother tongue  into English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations for English sounds not found in the speaker's first language. The age at which speakers begin to immerse themselves into a language is linked to the degree in which native speakers are able to detect a non-native accent the exact nature of the link is disputed amongst scholars and may be affected by neurological plasticity, cognitive development, motivation, psychosocial states, formal instruction, language learning aptitude, and the usage of their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Speaking English with a timing pattern that is dramatically different may lead to speech that is difficult to understand. More transparently, differing phonological distinctions between a speaker's first language and English create a tendency to neutralize such distinctions in English, and differences in the inventory or distribution of sounds may cause substitutions of native sounds in the place of difficult English sounds.