Speech Sound In Language

One of the aspects of language is speech sound. The study of speech sound in language is called phonology. Each language has its own speech sound structure which differ from one language to another language. By learning the speech sound structure of language, not only can we recognize and understand how to pronounce a word of a language correctly, but can also produce the word using correct pronunciation. Furthermore, we will be able to explain why we should pronounce it that way. In his book ‘English Phonetics,’ Ramelan (1994) says “when a student wants to learn a foreign language, in this case, English, he will have to learn to speak it” (p. 2). He has to try to speak in the way the native speakers speak the language. This can be achieve

There are rules of combining speech sounds of language, and some rules which are applicable to certain language might not be applicable to another language. Phonological rules are part of communication through language, whether spoken or written, and knowing what they are and why they exist can help us better understand our world. In order to understand the purpose of phonological rules, we need to understand what a phoneme is. According to the traditional phonological theories “a phoneme is the minimal unit in the sound system of a language” ( Crystal,1997, p. 287) . Phonological rules are the rules whether written or spoken that control how sounds change during vocal communication. Phonological rules describe how phonemes are realized as their allophones in a given environment. Environment in phonology typically refers to neighboring

“Phonological rules are part of communication through language, whether spoken or written, and knowing what they are and why they exist can help us better understand our world” (Smith 1995). There are two common types of phonological rules, these are universal (Assimilation) and non-universal (Dis-assimilation) rules. “Assimilation is a rule that makes two or more neighboring segments more similar by making the segments share some feature” (Jun, 1995). While, dissimilation is a rule that change feature values to make two phonemes in a string more dissimilar. “Deletion in English Language is the dropping of sound that takes place especially because morphemes are put close to each other and also because of their occurances in unstressed syllables or in rapid speech” (Ramelan,1977, p. 174).. Finally, “dissimilation is when a sound changes one of its features to become less similar to an adjacent sound, usually to make the two sounds more distinguishable”. Consequently, studying the way that a particular phonological rule operates in a spoken language, linguists are able to determine the physiological and neurological mechanisms that translate mental language into spoken