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 Watch this video of a lecture by a very well-known specialist.

 Who is he? Have you heard about him before?
He is Héctor Ortiz Lira, a teacher from Chile. I have never heard about
him before; this is my first time.
 Take down notes on the concepts he introduces and compare them to
the ones you have from the bibliography on the subject. Are there any
differences? Similarities?
Phoneme
What is a phoneme? It is a unit of sound which can convey differences in
meaning. A phoneme is a group of sounds. It means that if two sounds
cab be used to differentiate words, we say that these two sounds belong
to two different phonemes. We have to concentrate on phonemes rather
than on allophones
Allophone
Allophone can be defined as varieties of the same phoneme.
Aallophones: refers to the different realizations of the sounds = different
articulations

The English pure vowels phonemes

1) /i:/ seat /si:t/
2) /ɪ/ sit /sɪt/
3) /e/ set /set/
4) / æ/ sat /sæt/
5) /ɑ:/ cart /ka:t/
6) /ɒ/ cot /kɒt/
7) /ɔ:/ caught /kɔ:t/
8) /ʊ/ foot /fʊt/
9) /u:/ boot /bu:t/
10) /ʌ/ cut /kʌt/
11) /ɜ:/ work /wɜ:k/
12) /ə/ across /ə’krɒs/
Diphthongs
1) [eɪ̯ ] pay /pei/
2) [aɪ̯ ] high /hai/
3) [ɔɪ̯ ] joy /
4) [əʊ̯ ] low /ləʊ̯ /
5) [aʊ̯ ] now /naʊ̯ /
6) [ɪə̯ ] near /nɪə̯ /
7) [eə̯ ] care /keə̯ /
8) [ʊə] tour /tʊə/
Consonants
The 6 English plosives
1) /p/ pen /pen/
2) /b/ bin /bin/
3) /t/ ten /ten/
4) /d/ done /dʌn/
5) /k/ king /kin/
6) /g/ gone /gɒn/
The 2 English Affricates
1) /ʧ/ chin /ʧin/
2) /ʤ/ jam /ʤæm/
The 9 English Fricatives
1) /f/ fun /fʌn/
2) /v/ van /væn/
3) /θ/ thin /θin/
4) /ð/ then /ðen/
5) /s/ soon /su:n/
6) /z/ zip /zip/
7) /ʃ/ shine /ʃain/
8) /ʒ/ beige /beiʒ/
9) /h/ hen /hen/
The English Nasals
1) /m/ man /mæn/
2) /n/ none /nʌn/
3) /ŋ/ thing /θiŋ/
The English Approximants
1) /l/ lane /lein/
2) /r/ run /rʌn/
3) /w/ one /wʌn/
4) /j/ yes /jes/
The English Consonants: Main oppositions
d–ð
b – v another problematic area for Spanish speakers because in Spanish we
do not make difference between b - v
ʃ - ʧ; j - ʤ
s – z – ð these are three different kinds of friction.
considering the notion of phoneme and their "contrastive" nature, it's
essential that we learn to pronounce the sounds correctly because otherwise
we can change the meaning of what we want to convey
We say that some phonemes are contrastive because they are different. If
we replace a sound, the result is a change of meaning.
Minimal pairs or minimal sets are two pairs of words that have only one
difference in terms of sound.

físico=fonética
abstracto=meaning
un fonema/los fonemas: NO EXISTEN
ARTICUALTORY, ACOUSTIC AND AUDITORY PHONETICS
PHONEMES: BELONG TO THE FIELD OF PHONOLOGY
PHONOLOGY deals with the way sounds behave within a language, how
they make up the system of sounds in a given language (or pattern)
phonic substance: noise
what actually comes out of our mouths
PHONETICS
PHONOLOGY: SELECTION – ORGANISATION INTO A GIVEN FORM OR
PATTERN

Vowel Diagrams
Vowel sounds are produced in most cases without any kind of contact
between the articulators. They can be made different from each other mainly
by raising a certain part of the tongue to different levels, by modifying the
shape of the lips and by raising and lowering the velum.

Transcription: Phonetic Symbols

Here are some important aspects you must bear in mind when
transcribing from listening:
-Ponemic transcription between slant bars (/). (Finch)
- When we transcribe from listening, we need to concentrate on what we
actually hear rather than on the spelling of separate words.
1) Revise and complete with the phonetic symbols:
Short vowels: ............................
Long vowels: .............................
Centring diphthongs: .........................................
Closing diphthongs: ...........................................
2) Provide examples (key words) which contain the vowels and
diphthongs, write both their spelling and phonemic transcription
3) Remember:
These are THE ONLY symbols you can use to transcribe vowel sounds!
So, after these tips, please check the song activity and revise your
transcriptions!

Listening and transcription

 This listening is intended for you to train your ears in consonants.
 Listen to the song "One Vision" by Queen, complete the missing words
and transcribe them using phonetic symbols.
 Group the consonants from the missing words and classify them
according to their manner and place of articulation.
One man, one goal, one ……………… And in my heart it ………………..
One heart, one soul, just one Look what they've done to my dream.
………………..
One flash of light, yeah one god, one
One vision
………...
So give me your hands
One flesh, one bone One true
…………….. Give me your hearts
One voice, one hope One real I'm ready
…………….
There's only one …………………….
Wowowowo gimme one
……………….. One world, one ………………….
Yeah one vision.

No wrong, no right
I'm gonna tell you there's no black and No hate, no fight Just excitation
no white,
 No blood, no stain
All we need is one world wide vision. All through the night
It's a ……………………… wowowowo
One flesh, one bone yeah.

One true …………….,

One race, one hope One flesh, one bone One true religion

One real ……………… One voice, one hope One real

decision.
Wowowowo yeah, wow yeah, wow
yeah
Gimme one night, Gimme one hope,

I had a dream When I was young Just gimme one man, one man

A dream of sweet …………………. One bar, one night

A glimpse of hope and unity One day hey hey,

And visions of one sweet union Just gimme gimme gimme

But a cold wind blows One vision

And a dark rain falls

37 Essential Weak Forms

by Héctor Ortiz Lira
Read the following paper. It contains many weak forms we must aim at
producing in our daily speech.
1. For practice: transcribe them in your notebook
2. As a final activity, make your own chart with weak forms.
3. Can you add some more weak forms?

Stress

1. What are your ideas about "stress"? Write them down.

2. Read the text by Adrian Underhill

3. Do the activities following all the steps suggested by the author

4. Can you actually "feel" what stress is?

5. How do we mark stress in phonemic transcriptions?

6. How many types of stress are there?

7. After going through the text, write a definition of "stress"

8. How do this definition of stress differ from your previous ideas about it?

The Nature of Speech

According to Gimson, language has two manifestations: spoken language
and written language. In the following text you'll find information about the
nature of language and a description of these manifestations:

Speech and Language[1]

Speech
One of the chief characteristics of the human being is his ability to
communicate to his fellows complicated messages concerning every aspect
of his activity. A man possessing the normal human faculties achieves this
exchange of information mainly by means of two types of sensory
stimulation, auditory and visual. The child will learn from a very early age to
respond to the sounds and tunes which his elders habitually use in talking to
him; and, in due course, from a need to communicate, he will himself begin
to imitate the recurrent sound patterns with which he has become familiar. In
other words, he begins to make use of speech; and his constant exposure to
the spoken form of his own language, together with his need to convey
increasingly subtle types of information, leads to a rapid acquisition of the
frame-work of his spoken language. Nevertheless, with all the conditions in
his favour, a number of years will pass before he has mastered not only the
sound system used in his community but also has at his disposal a
vocabulary of any extent or is entirely familiar with the syntactical
arrangements in force in his language system.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the learning of another language later in life,
acquired artificially in brief and sporadic spells of activity and without the
stimulus arising from an immediate need for communication, will tend to be
tedious and rarely more than partially successful. In addition, the more firmly
consolidated the basis of a first language becomes or, in other words, the
later in life that a second language is begun, the more the learner will be
subject to resistances and prejudices deriving from the framework of his
original language. It may be said that, as we grow older, the acquisition of a
new language will normally entail a great deal of conscious, analytical effort,
instead of the child’s ready and facile imitation.
Writing
Later in life the child will be taught the conventional visual representation of
speech –he will learn to use writing. Today, in considering those languages
which have long possessed a written form, we are apt to forget that the
written form is originally an attempt at reflecting the spoken language and
that the latter precedes the former for both the individual and the community.
Indeed, many languages, so parallel are the two forms felt to be that the
written form may be responsible for changes in pronunciation or may at least
tend to impose restraints upon its development.

In the case of English, this sense of parallelism, rather than of derivation,

may be encouraged by the obvious lack of consistent relationship between
sound and spelling. A written form of English, based on the Latin alphabet,
has existed for more than 1,000 years and, though the pronunciation of
English has been constantly changing during this time, few basic changes of
spelling have been made since the fifteenth century.

The result is that written English is often an inadequate and misleading

representation of the spoken language of today. Clearly it would be unwise,
to say the least, to base our judgements concerning the spoken language on
prejudices derived from the orthography. Moreover, if we are to examine the
essence of the English language, we must make our approach through the
spoken rather than the written form. Our primary concern will be the
production, transmission, and reception of the sounds of English –in other
words, the phonetics of English.

Language
From the moment that we abandon orthography as our starting point, it is
clear that the analysis of the spoken form of English is by no means simple.
Each of us uses an infinite number of different speech sounds when we
speak English. Indeed, it is true to say that it is difficult to produce two
sounds which are precisely identical from the point of view of instrumental
measurement: two utterances by the same person of the word cat may well
show quite marked differences when measured instrumentally. Yet we are
likely to say that the same sound sequence has been repeated.
In fact we may hear clear and considerable differences of quality in the
vowel of cat as, for instance, in the London and Manchester pronunciations
of the word; yet, though we recognize differences of vowel quality, we are
likely to feel that we are dealing with a ‘variant’ of the ‘same’ vowel. It
seems, then, that we are concerned with two kinds of reality: the concrete,
measurable reality of the sounds uttered, and another kind of reality, an
abstraction made in our minds, which appears to reduce this infinite number
of different sounds to a ‘manageable’ number of categories.
In the first, concrete approach, we are dealing with sounds in relation
to speech; at the second, abstract level, our concern is the behaviour of
sounds in a particular language. A language is a system of conventional
signals used for communication by a whole community. This pattern of
conventions covers a system of significant sound units (the phonemes), the
inflection and arrangement of ‘words’, and the association of meaning with
words.
An utterance –an act of speech, is a single concrete manifestation of the
system at work. As we have seen, several utterances which are plainly
different on the concrete, phonetic level may fulfil the same function, i.e. are
the ‘same’, on the systematic language level.
It is important in any analysis of spoken language to keep this distinction in
mind and we shall later be considering in some detail how this dual
approach to the utterance is to be made. It is not, however, always possible
or desirable to keep the two levels of analysis entirely separate: thus, as we
shall see, we will draw upon our knowledge of the linguistically significant
units to help us in determining how the speech continuum shall be divided
up on the concrete, phonetic level; and again, our classification of linguistic
units will be helped by our knowledge of their phonetic features.
Reference:
[1] Gimson, A. C.: An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. Sixth
edition. Chapter I. Communication: Part I, Speech and Language.
________________________________________
Now in the following text you'll find information about the nature of spoken
language according to another author, Daniel Jones.

 First, read the text carefully and describe and give the characteristics of
speech as explained by Jones.

 Second, when we study a foreign language we come across a series of

difficulties. Considering spoken language, which are the difficulties of
pronunciation?

 According to Jones, which are the ways to surmount those difficulties?

Features of Connected Speech: Introduction
Up to now we've revised isolated sounds (short and long vowels,
dipthongs, consonants) and practised the transcriptions of words
considering their 'phonemic identity' according to their 'citation form', i.e.,
the way the are found in pronunciation dictionaries.
 But what happens to individual sounds when we speak? When we
produce a 'speech chain'?
 Do the sounds remain the same as when said in isolation? Do they
change? What happens with their phonetic characteristics?
 Read the following article and see what the authors say about these
phenomena.
 After reading: how would you describe/define "connected speech"?