Phonemes and Allophones, Part 1

With all the sounds we can make with our mouths, how do we know which ones are important for our language? This week, The Ling Space takes a look at phonemes, the basic sounds of language, and how we can identify them, how we tell them apart, and how our brains react to them.
This is Topic #4!
This week's tag language: Irish!
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Spanish subtitles by Federico Falletti
Looking forward to next week!

[@fahds2583]

this channel is a blessing for people pursuing Computational Linguistics

[@michelleg2901]

you save my life moti, I don't get any lectures for this topic when I'm only getting edumecation from my bedroom. Love this video

[@chriswadas]

Ling Space is fantastic. I’ve been watching and rewatching for years.

[@thelingspace]

Anastasia Provias Yep, I remember you! And the channel's going well. Thanks! Hope you find some of the videos here useful, and that you're having a good term. ^_^

[@anastasiaprovias6625]

Yes they are very useful thanks ! :)

[@HomeOfGameplays]

+The Ling Space thank you very much ,this video is very useful

[@gogumabhan6879]

Recently got accepted to a grad school majoring in English and you saved my life. thank you so much for the Phonetics and Phonology series.

[@Qt216]

Thank you for making Linguistics fun to learn. I’m taking an Intro Ling class and your videos help me understand. Your visuals add to comprehension. I’m subscribed!

[@il-bluemon-li9138]

aɪ lʌv ðɪs.

[@thelingspace]

+Il-Blue=Mon-lI θæŋks! aj lajk tɑkɪŋ əbawt fənɑlədʒi. ^_^

[@gedgar]

+The Ling Space I would say ðeiŋks

[@robert_wigh]

[bʌt wɑt ɪz ðɛ dɪfəɹənz bətwi:n fənɒlədʒi ↗ænd fənɛtiks] (?)

[@MemerDad]

The Ling Space LOL

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

aɪ ˈhet wn ˈpipl ˈraɪd ɪn aɪ pi e

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

"There is no marker in your mouth that says 'now you are in the alveolar zone' "... except of course for the hard palate. That might not have been the best example. Figuring out exactly where the hard palate ends and where the teeth and soft palate begin, that can be a little ambiguous, but the alveolar ridge isn't some abstract concept, it's an unmistakable feature of the mouth's geometry.

[@GregSanders]

This lesson on the fundamental sounds that make up languages and how they vary from language to language made good use of audio and video, I could follow it a lot better than I could without the audio examples. One thing I was left wondering: was whether the number phonemes varies much from language to language?

[@thelingspace]

Greg Sanders Thanks for the question! And yeah, I think the whole experience together goes over well. ^_^The number of phonemes really does vary a lot from language to language. We can think about this intuitively just by comparing the number of vowels in English to something like Spanish or Italian or Japanese, which all have only 5 vowel phonemes. English has 12 (or at least, my dialect does; there's some variation there, too).Languages can have very low numbers of phonemes overall: Hawaiian has either 13 or 18, depending on how you view vowel length, and the commonly held champion of phonemes, Taa, a Khoisan language from Botswana and Namibia, has well over a hundred, with the exact number depending on how you analyze some of the clusters. So that's a lot of difference there!

[@anastasiaprovias6625]

Moti! I don't know if you remember me but I was in your Phonetics class last year at Concordia.I didn't know you had a channel! Hope all is well :) Anastasia P

[@vatnidd]

Noticed that 愛 phonetics thing in the background. Nice touch!

[@thelingspace]

Samuel Lo Thanks! We do love the phonetics, and it seemed appropriate. ^_^

[@lizben3463]

Your videos are very useful for my "Intro to English Linguistics" revision! Thanks for sharing your knowledge^^ You also look kind of like one of my linguistics tutors last semester :D

[@thelingspace]

+LizBen@ Maybe there's a linguist look? Glad we could be of help, though - I hear your exam went well. ^_^

[@lizben3463]

+The Ling Space yes thank you :) I still have an Semantics and Phonetics exam to study for (for my Linguistics minor). A linguistics look :'D yeah maybe :)

[@thelingspace]

+LizBen@ Well, we have a bunch of videos on that stuff, too. Hopefully they can help. ^^

[@MrCrowley2289]

I`m from Argentina and I have started a english course and I think that the phonemes is the most important part of the english language because if you don`t express correctly the meanings of the words can change. (sorry if i didn`t write correctly but i`m a rookie yet)

[@thelingspace]

+MrCrowley2289 Sure, no problems with understanding you! And yeah, phonemes are really important to any language - if you want to express yourself, having a good handle on them lets you avoid saying things you don't want. They're the most basic building blocks, even down below morphemes, so it makes sense they'd be so core to how language works. Thanks for the comment! ^_^

[@wenyichu3486]

I love the summary you made at the end of the lesson!!!

[@elizabeth199002]

I just love your KZbin Channel. In a week I'm going to take an important exam on linguistics and methodology of language teaching, and I'm watching your videos to revise a few linguistic notions, it's really helpful. I've also noticed that you lived in Montreal - I'm going to move to that city in 3 weeks :) Greetings!

[@thelingspace]

+Lili Lili Thanks so much! Glad you like the channel and you're finding it helpful! I bet you'll enjoy Montreal, too - it's a great city. ^_^

[@gabradabra8852]

I love these vids! You are so helpful! I don't understand anything in my linguistics class. These videos are really helping. Thank you so much

[@elizabethmamesrivera315]

I love your anime collection

[@swastyanaacintya568]

Your youtube channel is soooo helping NEW LING student Like me. Great explanation :)

[@gisele0100]

You're such a great captvating teacher! Thank you!

[@nisrinazahidah641]

Hey Moti I just want to say thank you for making this video, I still make an effort to understand this material. I hope I can finish this semester's material exxcellently.👍👍

[@blahk8021]

wow! you made it so clear for me to understand. Thank you!

[@romaissabelkiss4073]

i am an arabic speaker ^____^ thankyou ...it's a great job

[@thelingspace]

+Romaissa Belkiss You're welcome! Thanks for watching. ^_^

[@MemerDad]

Thanks for your ever amazing channel

[@katzeskywalker5797]

thank you so much for your videos! they are really helpful!

[@hanaalaa8282]

Your videos are amazing! I have a question, You said that our brains don't get the differences between these phonemes we don't have in our language, Is that's why I don't hear the difference between [ш] and [щ] In Russian? I just want to make sure that I understand this part.

[@MingoMash]

+The Ling Space Are leg and egg considered a minimal pair or something else? Unlike your examples, egg doesn't have a different phoneme in place of the 'L', it has none :O

[@KoenBrouwerTV]

you are awesome

[@souadoudemnati994]

pleeeease need your help! what are the steps in making a phonemic statement of a certain sounds?? knowing that we have a data to work on...?

[@sameehlahiwel3096]

im an arab and this is so useful thank u qalbi =)) my final exam today God bless u sir

[@thelingspace]

I hope it went well! Thanks for watching. Best of luck! ^_^

[@atouloupas]

Thanks for the helpful video! I just have a question: I usually see the word "time" written as /taɪm/ in the IPA. However many people write it like /tajm/. Well, "time" is one syllable but I think you can pronounce two vowels in one syllable, so is the broad transcription [taɪ̯m]? Let me give another example; take a look at the French name "Camille". It's pronounced /kaˈmij/. The /j/ sound doesn't sound the same in English /tajm/ or /lej/ (-> I think it was an example in the video). I know it's a semivowel and semivowels are pretty hard to understand, because they're neither consonants nor vowels, but could you tell me if /j/ is indeed used instead of /ɪ/ in English vowel diphthongs that have this kind of gliding? Thanks

[@fridasplendido8768]

Great video! And channel! I will give my students a link to this. :)

[@thelingspace]

Frida Splendido Thanks! Glad you're finding them useful. We definitely want them to be of use to teachers, too, so we're very happy to get comments like this. ^_^

[@teacherdkennedy]

I have two questions: 1 is, in tonal languages, does the same sound but with a different tone count as a new phoneme, since it can make up a minimal pair? I had a friend taking basic Thai, and he was freaked out because the word for horse and mother in law sound exactly the same but in a different tone. The second question is based in my work as an ed therapist working with kids with dyslexia and poor phonemic awareness. I have noticed that some things that they have trouble differentiating are not differentiated in other languages--for instance the l and r you mentioned. They are very different in English, but not in Japanes, but for a lot of my kiddos, when they are in a beginning blend, they tend to flip them. Any idea why (other than possible Japanese past lives;-)

[@thelingspace]

Diana Kennedy Thanks for the questions! First, yes, if you're in a tonal language like Thai or Mandarin, tone is considered phonemic, for the exact reason you gave. If switching one tone for another causes the meaning to change, then those tones are also phonemic.Second, despite the differences in how [l] and [ɹ] are articulated, it actually turns out that they're very similar to each other acoustically. To reliably differentiate between them, you have to pay attention to variation in a part of the acoustic spectrum that isn't generally important for other English consonants (specifically, variation in the third formant). It's been shown for Japanese speakers learning English that they don't cue into what's necessary for differentiating between English l and r, and though I'm not aware of similar research done with dyslexics, I'd suspect something similar's going on there.Dyslexics and phonemic awareness is something we'll probably talk about eventually, but it seems like there is a basic problem with slicing up the speech stream enough. We all have this sort of problem at some level; just try to say what the first consonant cluster in "exact" is. Is it [ks]? Is it [gz] or [kz] or [gs]? That division is really hard, and pretty much everyone will hit a wall somewhere. What underlies dyslexia is definitely a highly debated topic, but one hypothesis I like is that this division is more challenging for them, so the wall comes earlier.

[@wockawocka219]

So so so helpful, thank you so much

[@thelingspace]

conor mcateer Thanks for the comment! Glad you found it useful. ^_^

[@pzk9349]

Thank you for the video you share with us. What software did you use for visual effects of the video? i mean for the subtitles and texts on the screen.

[@thelingspace]

+Behnam Pzk Glad you liked the video! The screen text and other visual effects are done in After Effects, but the English subtitles are just the native KZbin subtitling software. Hope this helps!

[@kingd04fails]

6:30 That's right. The English "th" I hear as a German "d", "s", "f" or "v"

[@Doubleduck1111]

YOU SAVED MY LIFE FELLOW LANGUAGE LOVING OTAKU

[@thelingspace]

So glad to be able to help! ^_^

[@jaffa4242]

I'm a simple bird. I see Jasper Fforde; I click like.

[@aguaf]

My friends are from different areas. Some of them can not tell the difference between n- and l-. Some can not tell -m and -n. And the Korean d- and t- sound the same to me.

[@GabPinheiro]

You are awesome! :-)

[@sugarfrosted2005]

6:40 In this paper I copyeditted the French author consistently misspelled "Helmholtz" as "Helmoltz". it makes sense now as to why.

[@thelingspace]

That's really interesting! Cool. But yeah, that makes sense - that "h" is definitely a hard thing for French speakers to work with.

[@Flugmorph]

EVA FAN!

[@dungletien4239]

Thank. It's very useful

[@nicholasw996]

Is there a minimal pair in English between /θ/ and /ð/?

[@MrLuigiMor]

"Thigh" and "thy".

[@robert_wigh]

That was just what I was about to ask! Thank you very much for responding, it has been bothering me for a very long time now. ☺

[@elquintoroble]

loathe and loath

[@robert_wigh]

elquintoroble Thank you very, very much for responding!

[@Wadaschristine]

Do you know of any videos on this topic without the IPA, that is not geared toward children?

[@kekitochi]

Can someone tell me what does it mean your "adopted language'' n thnx's in advance

[@felipecardona2512]

goo work keep it up

[@livedandletdie]

I heard the difference between scoop and goop... Maybe because I'm Multilingual, English, Norwegian, Danish, German and Swedish(I also speak the dialect with the most vowels and phonemes and diphthongs.) But anyway it's a really nice video anyway, I mean most people wouldn't pick up on the minute differences in your scoop and goop. Hadn't it been that I like language videos and like playing with sounds when I'm bored and speaking 5 languages it would been a different story I guess. I should learn Dutch next. Sure I'm literally the worst in the world at speaking German because their grammar is stupid, but at least it's closer to Swedish than English which is only closer grammatically to Swedish.

[@robert_wigh]

”I also speak the dialect with the most vowels and phonemes and diphthongs.” Vilken dialekt råkar det vara? Jag har tyvärr ingen uppfattning om det.

[@daniarabadzhov]

Is it ['hæɪŋɚ] or ['hæɪŋgɚ]?

[@MahmoudAgha]

You exchanged the meaning for the Arabic words qalbi means my heart while kalbi means my dog

[@yeonjungmoon3347]

Hi~thanks your KZbin channel. It helped me a lot!:) I have a question about English pronunciations. I am Korean, so whenever I heard very diverse English pronunciations from many countries(even it's the same word), I felt like that word sounds like totally different word from what I know. Like me who is not real native english speaker, how I can get it? Everyone has their own free variations about english. T.T

[@Sueliteresinha1]

Em português é difícil imagine sem conhecer a Língua Inglesa.😲

[@howaboutno4586]

At 3:57 it sounds like he says "bitch" lo. ... or maybe it only sounds like that to me because I have a different phonology? hm..

[@lucianjanusm]

What the hell is a "bit"? (with eee sound) Never heard of a word like this

[@EchoHeo]

hehe you said pee

[@davegraham7550]

"No air out your mouth for 'p' or 't'"..I disagree.

[@georgelewisray]

: )