Good afternoon y’all!! How are you doing?
Some posts ago we started reviewing Phonology, its components and what phonemes are. (If you want to review it once more before reading this post, click here 😉 )
As you may very well know, around the world exist a variety of what we call “accents” in the English language, for example the American accent, the English accent, Irish, Scottish, Australian, and generally every English speaking country has it’s own accent. Even within English speaking countries, the accent varies depending on the region you find yourself in.
Now, if you aren’t a native English speaker, I’m sure that where you learned (or are learning) English, your teacher has a particular accent that they teach you with. I’m going to use my particular case as example:
I’m from Mexico, and usually, since we are closest to the U.S., the Mexican English teachers learn the American accent by default, and that’s what they teach here, but there are some private schools that only teach the British accent.
But guess what? The reality of ESL (English as a Second Language) schools is that, of course care about the students learning the “correct” pronunciation of the words, but mostly focus on them learning grammar and other things so that the students are able to communicate. There are some students that may present difficulties pronouncing words and end up adapting the pronunciation to their speech abilities, some others can adapt themselves to the pronunciation and have no problems with it; I believe it depends on the physiological capabilities of each person.
This situation sometimes leads to “creating” new accents… yes… it’s possible 😀
Have you ever heard about the Mexican accent? Neither did I until I watched this:
I had no idea we Mexicans sound like this 😀 but well…
American Accents:
As I mentioned before, even within English speaking countries the pronunciation of the words may vary depending on the region /state /county / you find yourself in. Watch this video and, even if you aren’t able to understand what people say, I’d like for you to pay attention to how they speak, their pronunciation:
British Accents:
Now that I notice, I remember all my teachers teaching me with a California accent… are you able to identify what kind of accent is your speech more similar to? What kind of accent do they teach in your region? Here are some examples of British accents too:
Phonemic Charts:
Previously I also mentioned that Phonology consists of 4 elements, do you remember them? One of them is the focus of this post! 😉
That’s right! I’m talking about phonemes. Phonemes are the written representation of the smallest unit of sound that we are able to produce to form the sound of words; and these representations of words are usually arranged in what we call the Phonemic chart.
A phonemic chart is an arrangement of phonemes in the shape of a table, or well, a chart, as the name indicates :D. The purpose of the phonemic chart, aside from helping us learn the phonemes and the sound they represent, is to somehow standardize pronunciation, that’s why when we search online for a phonemic chart, we will most likely find 2: a British phonemic chart and an American phonemic chart.
Arrangement of a Phonemic Chart:
The phonemic chart, whether it’s the British or the American one, usually has a certain arrangement that allows us to learn phonemes easily because it’s divided by blocks:
For learing purposes, here you have interactive phonemic charts of the British and American accents. I encourage you to check them out and practice your pronunciation! 😉
If you found this post interesting and the information useful, please help us reach more avid learners by liking and sharing!! Remember to share your thoughts in the comments, I’d love to read your opinion 🙂