Reflection 6.- Long and Short vowel sounds

                   In English there are long and short vowel sounds but in Spanish there is only short vowel sound, they are not represented with dots. Also, in Spanish the vowel sound allow the air escapes through the mouth with touching the tongue any point of articulation as hard palatal, soft palatal, alveolar, velum. In Spanish you never feel confuse doing sounds with vowels as in English you do. For example you probably get confuse pronounced the word hour in English, but if you say hora you notice that is easier identify one wovel as it is orthography write.

Souces: http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/spanish.htm

http://spanish.about.com/od/spanishpronunciation/a/pronouncing_vowels.htm

If you are interested about it topic you should visit those web pages to develop a clearly idea of that.

Chapter 5.- English Plosives

         English plosives consonants sound are six. Three of them are fortis (/p/,/t/,/k/), the others are lenis (/b/,/d/,/g/).  But fortis and lenis distinctions are complicate because of the articulators, but the only difference is that fortis consonants have higher air pressure in the vocal tract. The plosives have different places of articulation as bilabial, alveolar and velar, and occur at the initial position (CV), medial position (VCV), and final position (VC). Bilabial as in the word paper lips are pressed together. Alveolar as in the word deodorant, the tongue blade is pressed against the alveolar ridge. Velar as in the word google, the back of the tongue is pressed against the area where the hard palate ends and the soft palate begins.

Capther 4.- Diphthongs and Triphthongs

         Diphthongs consist of a movement from one vowel to another. It can be seen as a group of vowel sounds that are consistently longer in a given context in a label tens. English speakers seem to be more sensitive to the quality of  diphthongs as in beard. They are divided in two groups, the firs are three centring  diphthongs as in the word get and the second group are five closing Diphthongs as in the words home and face. Besides, thiphtongs are seem as complex English vowel consonant sounds because they are difficult to pronounce pupils do not notice the difference from Diphthongs  or long vowel sounds. It is a glide from one vowel to another then to a third as in the words “Diana”, “fewer”, “hour” all are pronounced rapidly without stop so it never is notice as in connecting speech in complete sentences when native speakers do.

Sources about diphthongs: http://esl.about.com/od/speakingenglish/a/pr_dipehv.htm

Abouth: thriphthongs: http://www.123teachme.com/learn_spanish/diphthongs_and_triphthongs

Chapter 3.- Long Vowels

            “How now brown cow” It sentence has English long vowels sounds. They tend to be long. Those can be seem as a group of vowel sounds that are consistently longer in a given context. Also, some writers give the label tens to long vowels. Long vowel sound traits are they are presided by two dots, one vowel symbol plus a length mark.   They are six /i:/, /a:/, /u:/, and so on. It shows the difference from short vowel sounds that are five without two dots. Besides, the way speaker produces them is different because of the tongue shape, position, and lips position as the /u/ vs. /u:/  lips are only moderately rounded, and is much less back and less close.

Extra excercises: http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/phonics-longshortvowels.html

Chapter 2.- The production of speech sounds

          

            I noticed that muscles are contracting when we speak. For that reason, is important to know the different parts of the vocal tract, so they are called articulators. Also, articulatory phonetics studies articulator. There are seven articulators such as lips, pharynx, soft palate, hard palate, tongue, teeth.  They are the main ones used in speech. Moreover, I saw the differences between vowels and consonants such as vocoids and contoids. Vocoids because there is not obstruction to air flow while Contoids there is. Besides, the distribution of vowels and consonant is different for each language as English cardinal vowels are located on a four side figure: from, back ,close, open.

Chapter 1.- Introduction

This unit is a brief introduction how phonetics and phonology are used in a language. Besides, students should be careful about accents of English such as England and Britain have different accents. It recommends speakers to use BBC pronunciation, so it is used in recent editions of the Cambridge English Pronunciation Dictionary http://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.html, and has an excellent pronunciation about difficult words and names. Pronunciation was not popular in a language teaching theorists, but learners must try to speak effective with BBC pronunciation, and communicate with native speakers more effective.