Recently I was told that French has eight or nine basic sounds; English has 43. Is this true? Are all forms of English included (British, American, Indian, Hong Kong, Singaporean, and so on)? Running the risk of defining what “is” is, can you explain what a ‘basic sound’ is? How is it measured?
Thanks!
There’s actually an organization called the International Phonetics Association which classifies sounds and what have you. They have this neat chart which you can see on the following link: http://www.uni-marburg.de/linguistik/dgweb/demos/demo1.htm
Linguists classify consonants by place, manner, and voicing, which are explained on the webpage.
As far as different sounds, there are certainly some sounds which exist in some languages but not in others. English, for example, doesn’t have sounds which involve the uvula (the dangly thing in the back of your throat), while Arabic does.
“Basic sound” is… well, what is a basic sound? Many sounds are found in many different languages. I hope the link helps.
The basic sounds you refer to are probably phonemes.
These are usually considered the simplest distinguishable linguistic sounds. In the case of English, we have one for each consonant and vowel sound (many more than the 5 vowels), as well as a few sounds which are transcribed as combinations of letters: ch, the “th” of father, the “th” of math, etc. Some of our sounds that we think of as a single sound are combinations of more than one. The long “A” of “day” for example, is actually an “e” followed by an “I”. That would probably come out as “eh, ee” if you were to put a pause between them.
I find it really difficult to believe that French has that few phonemes.
Many languages do not distinguish between phonemes that we do (most Indians cannot hear the difference between “v” and “w”), and many also distinguish sounds that we cannot. Depending on where you grew up, you may be able to tell the words “marry”, “mary”, and “merry” apart by sound, or not.
Also, as an example, many Indian languages differentiate between three different “t” sounds, which English speakers cannot normally tell apart, simply because we lump them all together.
If you want to find out more, I suggest you look through a beginning linguistics text.
There are two dental voiceless stops and and two retroflex voiceless stops in Indo-Sanskritic languages. (4 total, IOW.) One of each set is aspirated.
TRANSLATION of that fine linguistic jargon: The American English ‘t’ sound is made by putting the tongue on the alveolar ridge, between your upper teeth and the top of your mouth. (Say “tie a tie” and notice where your tongue goes.)
To make an Indian dental ‘t’ sound, stick your tongue against your teeth and say ‘t’–to make a retroflex sound, point your tongue against the very top of the roof of your mouth and make a ‘t’ sound. Aspiration depends on how much breath you puff out while saying each sound. (Notice the difference between the first ‘t’ in the English word “tie” and the last ‘t’ in the word “that”–the first one should sound kind of puffier and more full of air.)
That being said–my Indian relatives make fun of me because I can’t hear the difference to save my life! You can also make horrifying social gaffes by saying words with the wrong ‘t’ (or ‘d’) sound–they turn into completely different words!
Akash
Who Has Never Pronounced “Ghute” (coal) like “Gude” (cunt). NEVER!
And Who Never Got Laughed At, Either. By his English Students in India, no less. :eek:
Ah, but is there a good resource that lists the ‘difficult’ phonemes (in various languages) for English speakers?
One interesting point is that while you can’t hear the difference between the three different t sounds all native English speaking people use the same one. So you obviously once could and made the one you heard. I once read in a book that purported to be about English phonetics that the “l” was lateral in virtually all dialects of English. Even a superficial study of American speakers will show that in a word such as “laurel” the initial “l” is lateral (the tongue touches the roof of the mouth and the sound comes out the sides) while the final one is not. If you listen carefully, you will probably be able to hear the difference. But if someone does it wrong, you will not hear a different word, only a slight accent.
As for French, believe me it has many more than 8 or 9 phonemes. I think it has more than that many distinct vowel sounds (English is said to have 22-24 vowels depending on dialect). And it has about as many consonants as English. Although the French “t” is different from the English, speakers of neither language are much aware of the difference. One interesting thing is what French speakers do with the “th” sounds. In Quebec, they substitute “t” or “d”, while in France, they almost always substitute “s” or “z”. Is this a question of the differing phonetics of the two dialects or just learned from fellow speakers?
Straykat, your information regarding the number of basic phonemes in French is incorrect. There are at least twenty consonants alone – if I haven’t forgotten any. See below:
Consonants
/p/ - pouvoir
/b/ - beau
/t/ - temps
/d/ - demain
/k/ - couleur
/g/ - goûte
/f/ - femme
/v/ - ville
/s/ - sur, poisson
/z/ - Zut!, poison
/š/ - chercher
/ž/ - jouet
uvular fricative /r/ - rêve
/m/ - moi
/n/ - non
/ñ/ - mignon
/ng/ - [sub]believe this is rare in modern French[/sub]
/l/ - lit
Semi-vowels
/w/ - oui
/y/ - million
rounded /y/ - huit
Getting into French vowels is considerably more hairy, but the instances above make my point.
According to this page
Click on the link to see a table of phonemes.