Phonetics over time
How can the sounds or a language change so dramatically? As we speak, we all make little short cuts and modifications to make the pronunciation of the word easier. This makes the sentence more fluent and a more smooth-sounding speech. Over time, this change has occurred because the spellings of words haven't changed, just the pronunciation has.
The Great Vowel Shift is the most spectacular of all vowel changes the English language has been through. During the Fifteenth Century the pronunciation of English vowels changed in a dramatic but systematic and symmetrical manner. It is the single biggest reason why the difference between spellings and the vowels in English is so different. For example: A word like 'Perhaps' is more likely to be pronounced as 'Praps', with the unstressed sounds omitted because it is usual to omit unstressed vowels and syllables. The reason for these shortcuts is purely because it is more efficient for our speech organs to pronounce. With sound loss, there is also new sounds which appear. We do this by adding vowels to help pronounce words which are otherwise a cluster of difficult sounds. There is consonant (vocal folds, place of articulation and manner of articulation) cluster simplification, where words like Umbrella is pronounced Umberalla, Athlete is pronounced Athalete, Known pronounced as Knowan and so on. Consonants can also get added too, which is often because of a mistimed pronunciation. In the word family if you say it to fast that you don't hold the /m/ for long enough you automatically insert a little /b/ and it comes out as fambly. If you finish off a word to quick, and your voice organs relax before you finish the word, it often ends in a stop consonant. For example, no becomes nope if your organs relax too soon.
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Sounds are dropping out all the time, as well as new sounds appearing all the time. Most sounds that drop out are because language is always trying to be compacted. Sounds drop out very gradually, and don't happen to every single word, because every case is different. The sounds at the end of words are particularly vulnerable where the articulation is weaker, like the word 'Professional' is now more commonly known as 'Pro' simply because it is shortened and doesn't take as long to pronounce.
English is currently losing the unstressed vowel /ə\ (Schwa) in the middle of words to shorten the pronunciation of words. For example, most of you would pronounce 'Family' as /fæmli\ instead of fæməli. This drop out of the Schwa is simply to make the word easier to pronounce. Loss and addition aren't the only way which sounds can be modified. Sounds of words can also change, depending on their neighbouring words in the sentence, this is called assimilation. This is where words blend together, they change to become more like other words. For example, if you say pancake in a sentence you will more than likely end up saying something like pangcake. This happens because the /n/ is already anticipating the /k/ which follows it, so assimilation occurs putting the articulation into place.
The opposite to this is dissimilation, when the sounds become less like the other neighbouring sounds. This is mainly caused by similar sounds being repeated next to each other, and we find it difficult to pronounce. Tongue twisters are renowned for this, like Betty Botter bought some butter...it is extremely easy to find yourself replacing these sounds with totally random and different sounds. |
Metathesis is the last form of sound modification. This change of sounds is pretty much when we have no idea how to pronounce new words which we come across, or it can develop out of habit. In previous words which we know how to pronunciate, we can mix up our sounds. For example, ask becomes aks, wasp becomes waps or even potato crisps become potato crips. This is purely just an accidental slip of the tongue which is extremely common, even though you might not realise your actually doing it.
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