A Comparative Study of Dari Persian and English Language Consonant Sounds

This research article compares the consonant sounds of English and Dari Persian language in terms of state of larynx, place and manner of articulation. This research article aims to determine similarities and differences between the consonant systems of English and Dari Persian language which can be useful for teachers and learners of both languages, especially in listening and speaking skills. In this research article, the qualitative method has been used to find similar and different consonant sounds. In this research article, it was found out that eighteen consonants are similar in between, two consonant sounds are slightly similar, 4 English consonants are not present in Dari Persian, and 3 Dari Persian consonants are not present in English language. It is believed that one’s mother tongue obviously has influence on second or foreign language. That is, one’s own language pronunciation habits are so strong that they are extremely difficult to break. On the other hand, mispronouncing the sounds in spoken language can cause miscommunication or misunderstanding. Therefore, this research article can help teachers and learners of English with Dari Persian as the first language and vice versa to maintain effective and meaningful communication while listening and speaking with more focus on the sounds which are different between the first and the second or foreign language.

The relevance of dietetics in Gandhian philosophy: Mapping the trajectories of his experiments

This article argues for analytics of dietary habits of Mahatma Gandhi through an argument around his practices and manner of articulation on discourses on food; his experimentation around dietetics and its relation to political goals in the light of colonial governmentality. Gandhi's dietetics practice intervened with the construction of Oriental as the 'others', showing that the subject (Indian) domain constituted the hegemonic order of colonial reign by presenting the superiority inherent in the colonial culture. In this regard, this article describes the emergence of Gandhi's alternative dietary habits, with analyses of discourses on scientific treatment of food as a part of daily livelihood, while understanding and arguing for the importance of dietetics as an integral part of the political world of modernity. It concludes that the broader contours of Gandhian philosophy and its introduction in Indian society through nationalist politics are uniformly appended with the formulation of his experimentation, not only with his philosophical and political goals but also with his daily practices dietetics constitute an essential part. Throughout, there is an attempt to present the symbolic and discursive construction of dietetics and experimentations to negotiate the individual's character.

EFL Students’ Pronunciation Problems in Presenting Thesis Proposal at Tertiary Level of English Department

The aim of the research is to investigate EFL Students’ Pronunciation Problems in Presenting Thesis Proposal at Tertiary Level of English Department. This qualitative study reported in this article focused on segmental features problems. The instruments used to collect the data needed in this study were the researcher, recording, and Dictionary. The data analysis covered consonant and vowel pronunciation problems. was based on the theories of phonetics proposed by George Yule and Jacobs, which embraces voicing, manner of articulation and place of articulation for English consonant production and the tongue part and position, sound length, and mouth forming for English vowel production. The result of the study shows that the research subject encountered a number of segmental pronunciation problems consisting of consonants and vowels including pure vowels and diphthongs. Furthermore, this research revealed that the problem with consonant sounds were the substitution of the sounds [v], [ð], [θ], [t∫], [ʒ], [ʃ] [z] and the deletion of the sounds [k], [ɡ], [t], and [s]. The problem with pure vowel sounds were the substitution of the sound [ɪ], [iː], [ɛ], [ʊ], [ʌ], [ɜː], [ɒ], [ɔː] and [ə] and the insertion of the sound [ə] between two consonant sounds. The problem with diphthongs were: the monophthongization of the sound [aɪ], [aʊ], [eɪ], [ɪə], [əʊ], and the replacement of the sounds [eɪ] and [ɪə] with other diphthongs. It is suggested for the next researchers to investigate pronunciation problems related to supra-segmental aspects and phonemic opposition. and factors driving pronunciation problems in the EFL Classroom setting.

Cochlear Implants

Cochlear implants (CIs) are the most successful sensory implant in history, restoring the sensation of sound to thousands of persons who have severe to profound hearing loss. Implants do not recreate acoustic sound as most of us know it, but they instead convey a rough representation of the temporal envelope of signals. This sparse signal, derived from the envelopes of narrowband frequency filters, is sufficient for enabling speech understanding in quiet environments for those who lose hearing as adults and is enough for most children to develop spoken language skills. The variability between users is huge, however, and is only partially understood. CIs provide acoustic information that is sufficient for the recognition of some aspects of spoken language, especially information that can be conveyed by temporal patterns, such as syllable timing, consonant voicing, and manner of articulation. They are insufficient for conveying pitch cues and separating speech from noise. There is a great need for improving our understanding of functional outcomes of CI success beyond measuring percent correct for word and sentence recognitions. Moreover, greater understanding of the variability experienced by children, especially children and families from various social and cultural backgrounds, is of paramount importance. Future developments will no doubt expand the use of this remarkable device.

Calibration of Consonant Perception to Room Reverberation

Purpose We examined how consonant perception is affected by a preceding speech carrier simulated in the same or a different room, for different classes of consonants. Carrier room, carrier length, and carrier length/target room uncertainty were manipulated. A phonetic feature analysis tested which phonetic categories are influenced by the manipulations in the acoustic context of the carrier. Method Two experiments were performed, each with nine participants. Targets consisted of 10 or 16 vowel–consonant (VC) syllables presented in one of two strongly reverberant rooms, preceded by a multiple-VC carrier presented in either the same room, a different reverberant room, or an anechoic room. In Experiment 1, the carrier length and the target room randomly varied from trial to trial, whereas in Experiment 2, they were fixed within a block of trials. Results Overall, a consistent carrier provided an advantage for consonant perception compared to inconsistent carriers, whether in anechoic or differently reverberant rooms. Phonetic analysis showed that carrier inconsistency significantly degraded identification of the manner of articulation, especially for stop consonants and, in one of the rooms, also of voicing. Carrier length and carrier/target uncertainty did not affect adaptation to reverberation for individual phonetic features. The detrimental effects of anechoic and different reverberant carriers on target perception were similar. Conclusions The strength of calibration varies across different phonetic features, as well as across rooms with different levels of reverberation. Even though place of articulation is the feature that is affected by reverberation the most, it is the manner of articulation and, partially, voicing for which room adaptation is observed.

Pronunciation comparison of consonants in Chinese and Slovak languages

This contrastive analysis allows us to present the main characteristics of consonants in Chinese and Slovak. The comparison of the point of articulation as well as the manner of articulation of individual consonants represents the basis for conducting a contrastive analysis. Based on the findings, it is possible to identify similarities and differences among the consonants in both languages. In the process of learning the correct pronunciation of Chinese consonants, it is necessary to devote attention to differences as the source of students` incorrect pronunciation, therefore it is important to select a suitable teaching method for learning the correct pronunciation of consonants in Chinese, which are not present in students' mother tongue.

Phonological Variation and Change in Romanian

Romanian stands out from its sister Romance languages through the conditions of its historical evolution. It has developed in isolation from the other Romance languages, and in cultural and linguistic contact with various non-Romance populations. The history of writing in Romanian, and the earliest preserved texts, dating from the 16th century, also reflect this rather unique heritage. The main dialectal division is marked geographically by the Danube river. The variety developed north of the Danube forms the Daco-Romanian group, while the variety developed south of the Danube includes Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian. The most characteristic changes affecting consonants in the development of Romanian include several patterns of palatalization (with or without affrication, depending on the segments’ place and manner of articulation), the emergence of labial-coronal clusters as part of a more general preference for labials, and rhotacism, a major feature of nonstandard varieties. Major vocalic changes include patterns of diphthongization, vowel raising before nasals and in the context of trills, which led to the development of two phonemic central vowels, /ɨ/ and /ʌ/. Many of these patterns show variation among different varieties. In all varieties of Romanian, vowel alternations are involved in morpho-phonological alternations. The stress pattern of modern Romanian follows the stress pattern of Balkan Romance. The standard and nonstandard varieties differ with respect to their intonation patterns, particularly in the case of yes/no questions.

Time-Frequency Analysis of Kannada Phonetics

This paper presents phonetics of Kannada language and their classification based on time-frequency analysis. Each distinct sound of speech called phoneme is produced by changing the shape of the vocal tract tube. The resonances of the vocal tract tube called formant frequencies are responsible for producing different phonemes. It is observed that vowels (Swaragalu in Kannada) have clear formant structure and they are about 3 to 5 formant frequencies of significance below 5000 Hz. They are characterized by having high energy, maximum airflow and periodicity and are classified based on the location of formant frequencies. Consonants (Vyanjanagalu in Kannada) are classified based on voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation. Time-frequency analysis reveals that there are totally 37 distinct phonemes in Kannada language.

EXPLAINING THE ENGLISH CONSONANT SOUNDS TO EFL LEARNERS: MORE ATTENTION ON VOICING DIMENSION / L’EXPLICATION DES SONS CONSONANTIQUES ANGLAIS AUX APPRENANTS DE L’ANGLAIS LANGUE ETRANGERE : PLUS D’ATTENTION AU VOISEMENT

To describe English Consonant Sounds (ECS), there are generally three major dimensions to be taken into account. These are Place of Articulation (POA), Manner of Articulation (MOA) and Voicing. The description of Voicing in the summary charts for English consonants raises the problem of its accurate position beside the POA and MOA. This brings about the issue related to which positions Voicing would occupy among the following: i) beside POA; ii) beside MOA; iii) Between POA and MOA (VPM). In order to solve this problem, the current paper aims to pinpoint some features that Voicing commonly shares with POA and MOA. To deal with, 64 tables of presentation of ECS have been selected from websites using the browser ‘Google’. Through a descriptive analysis, the results show that 71% of the presentations do not figure out the voicing dimension in the tables, but they do that in another way; 25% of them show clearly the three dimensions of each ECS and 4% of them present the three dimensions separately. Based on these results, Voicing is, most of the time, granted less attention in teachers’ explanations to EFL learners as if it were worthless. Therefore, it is suggested that the EFL teachers, while describing the ECS, should pay equal attention to voicing dimension during their teaching or in their presentation of ECS in a table. Pour décrire les sons consonantiques anglais (ECS), on tient généralement compte de trois dimensions principales : Le point d'articulation (POA), le mode d'articulation (MOA) et le voisement. L'apparition de ce dernier dans les tableaux récapitulatifs des consonnes anglaises peut soulever la question de sa position exacte à côté du POA et du MOA. Ceci pose le problème relatif aux différentes positions que le Voisement pourrait occuper parmi les suivantes : i) à côté de POA ; ii) à côté de MOA ; iii) entre POA et MOA (VPM). Afin d’essayer de résoudre ce problème, le présent article tente de mettre en évidence certaines caractéristiques que le Voisement partage communément avec le POA et le MOA. Pour ce faire, 64 tableaux de présentation des sons des consonnes anglaises ont été sélectionnés sur des sites web utilisant le navigateur "Google". Une analyse descriptive montre que 71 % des présentations ne tiennent pas compte de la dimension du voisement dans les tableaux, mais qu'elles le font d'une autre manière ; 25 % d'entre elles montrent clairement les trois dimensions de chaque ECS et 4 % d'entre elles présentent les trois dimensions séparément. Sur la base de ces résultats, il apparaît que le voisement est, la plupart du temps, moins pris en compte dans les explications des enseignants aux apprenants de l’Anglais comme une Langue Etrangère, comme si elle était sans valeur. Par conséquent, il est suggéré que les enseignants d'anglais langue étrangère, tout en décrivant les sons des consonnes anglaises (ECS), accordent la même attention à la dimension du voisement pendant leur enseignement ou dans leur présentation de l'ECS dans un tableau. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0780/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>