Here is a simple definition of Phonetics: the study of speech sounds. Each letter stands for ONE speech sound and each sound is represented by ONLY ONE letter.
Some of you smarties might understand this right away, but I think I can speak for most when I say that it is very foreign! Here is a silly example:
Does anybody know what this word is phonetically?! "GHOTI"
I'm not sure if I'm giving you enough space to actually guess, but if you said the word "fish", you'd be correct!! You see,
the gh makes a "f" sound like in the word laugh
the o makes an "i" sound like in the word women
the ti makes a "sh" sound like in the word nation
Basically, what I have been learning, is the English language is VERY complicated...and I am sooo glad that it is my native language! I feel like once I understand all that goes into our language, larning a different language will seem easy! We have been taking every consenant and vowel and trying to figure out where and how it comes out of our mouth. Do our lips go together on the word, like if we say "mouth"? That would be considered bilabial. Does our tongue hit the back of our teeth when we say words like "tiger"? Do our teeth bite our bottom lip when we say words like "vitamin"?
If you are anything like me, you have NEVER, I mean NEVER, even thought about this. Most of you might not ever care still! But it is starting to become interesting to me. And because I am going to learn a new language soon, I need to start becoming aware of sounds and how we use our mouth to say them.
They say phonetics is important, because it is very consistant. When we learn how to write phonetically, we can begin to write any language phonetically! And this...excites me!
