Phonemic Awareness Plays a Role in Language Learning
November 29, 2022
In linguistics, a phoneme is the smallest unit of speech that helps to distinguish one word (or an element of the word) from another. Whether it is a sound or group of sounds like "shhh", they are perceived to have the same function by all speakers of that language. So, phonemic awareness plays a big role in language learning as it separates one word from another in the language being read or spoken. For example, when used in American English, the element p in the word “lap” distinguishes it from the words “lab” and “lag”.
A phoneme can have more than one variant and each phonetically distinct variant is called an allophone. When these differences do not serve to distinguish one word from another, it can make it difficult for a native speaker to hear phonetic differences at all. If American English is your native tongue, you use many words that contain the letter “t”. Although phonetically different, the t-sound in the words “the”, “little” and “sit” may sound similar, but each are considered to be unique phonemes.
Symbolic International Phonetic Alphabet
Since phonemes are based on spoken language, linguists who record spoken words use special symbols taken from the International Phonetic Alphabet that are placed between slash marks. The IPA was created to supersede the multitude of individual transcription systems that linguists had been forced to use. Its creators were able to sidestep some of the global confusion by providing a unique symbol for each distinctive sound found in a language. The alphabet of sounds uses Roman characters and diacritics are used to denote nasalization, length, stress, and tones.
Grapheme is a written symbol used in transcription to represent a sound. It can be a single letter or sequence of letters that represent the phoneme. If you say the sound, it is a phoneme. If you write the letter of the sound, it is a grapheme.
Although the IPA is widely used by linguists, dictionaries, and even singers, it was not adopted as a worldwide solution for universal phonetic transcription. Phonemes are traditionally written between slanted lines, such as /p/, /m/, or /l/. Allophones are the different pronunciations of the same phoneme with phonetic variation. Despite the fact that American English only has 26 letters in its alphabet, there approximately 44 unique sounds (including phonemes represented by letter combinations like “th”).
Languages by Number and Type of Phonemes
In English phonology there are 20 vowel phonemes that act as a connector between all the sounds in a syllable and that's the reason why every syllable must have a vowel. The 24 consonant phonemes are categorized by the place and manner of articulation in the mouth that produces the correct sound. Listed below are common languages with their total number of phonemes, the number of consonant phonemes, and the number of vowel phonemes (including tones and stress):
|
LANGUAGE American English French Italian Japanese Korean Spanish |
# CONSTANT PHONEMES 24 20 + (1) 23 + (1) 15 + (9) 21 19 |
# VOWEL PHONEMES 20 14 7 5 7 5 |
TOTAL # PHONEMES 44 34 + (1) 30 + (1) 20 + (9) 28 24 |
It is important to note that estimates of phoneme size by type can differ greatly between sources and those listed above represent standard dialects for each language category. Values listed in parentheses indicate the number of marginal phonemes. Marginal phonemes are notably different phonologically from the majority of sounds found in a given language. Loanwords are a common culprit as they introduce non-native sounds into the borrowing language. Phonemic awareness is critical for learning to read and spell in any language with an alphabetic writing system but phonological skills do not correlate to intelligence.
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