Dear Editor,
To begin, the study of Linguistics Science will help multilingual students and speakers develop a chosen career in the field of linguistics and phonetics. Linguistics science provides information concerning the historical development and structure of language.
This article provides vital information about linguistics science and phonology to students and speakers of Other Languages. The bilingual, multilingual, and general English speakers will find it necessary in the study of modern languages.
Linguistics – The science of language, or the study of language, including, speech, sounds, language structure, history, historical relationship and language forms. Phonology is the study of the system of sounds used in language. It includes the study of stress, rhythm and intonation, Phonology comes from the Greek (phoneme=sound).
A linguist is a person who studies the history and structure of language, or a person who speaks different languages or two languages well. The field of linguistics and phonetics dates back to the 4th-6th century B.C. Phonetics – the study of speech sounds, the means by which they are produced, and the manner in which they are perceived. Linguistics and phonetics are related to anatomy and physiology, neurology, antropology, physics and music. The classification of speech, sight and touch are essential in teaching foreign languages, correcting mistakes of children, and for teaching the deaf and blind to learn and perceived accordingly.
Linguistics dialects were made possible by construction of linguistics atlases by the Germans and French in 1875, 1902, and 1910 established that a phonetic law was a best statement of historical fact explaining the social, economic, and historical changes in the study of linguistics. Aitchison, Jean, in the book “Teach Yourself Linguistics”, sixth edition 2003, stated linguistics is the systemic of language, and tries to answer four important questions: What is language? How does language work? How does human language differ from animal communication? How does a child learn to speak? According to Aitchison, linguistics look first at the spoken word, which preceded the written everywhere in the world.
Dr. Rhoda Arrindell, a local linguist, in her book “Language, Culture and Identity”, explained spoken linguistics to include a national dialect of local cultural ancestors’ expressions for mother tongue usage.
John Duns Scotus (C.1266-C.1308) linguist, philosopher, theologist, teacher and scholar. He links the study of theology with the study of linguistics and fights against classical learning relating to ancient Greek and Roman influence on language, literature, and culture. The word “dunce” came from John Duns. His followers were called Duns men who were educated, smart, and brilliant. Today, the word dunce is misused in the English language and applied to any opponent of education to mean a dull ignorant person, or a learner slower than others.
Historical Linguistics and the English Language: During the 8th-11th Century AD, Vikings were Scandinavian sea pirates and traders. They invaded and settled in parts of North-Western Europe. England was one of those parts. The Danes-Scandinavian branch of the Vikings spread their territory and established the United Danish Kingdom in 1397-1523 in parts of Europe. They also brought their own words and symbols with them into the old English Language. When the Germans conquered England many years ago, Germanic became the mother language of England. Old English words were the Anglo-Saxon language of England. The Germans introduced their own symbols with pronunciation of words and letters of the alphabet into the English language. Examples include Germanic-Scandinavian words transfer from old English into modern English are words such as skill, window, leg, birth and glitter are just a few.
When the French Normans invade England in 1066, they also brought many French words into the English language. Many French words from old English days are still used in modern English language. Examples include: help, royal, clothes, dress, aid and kingly, and many others.
The Netherlands also made their own contribution to old words used today in modern English such as boom, deck, easel, stoop, freight and etch. Today, most modern English vocabulary are taken from the Greek and Latin. Examples include: biology (GK) bios means life and logos = study; psychology (GK) psche means soul or the mind; phonology (GK) phone means sounds; lingua (L) meaning language; navalis (L) meaning navy; datum (L) meaning data. The meaning of many English words can be easily recognized and identified by prefixes and suffixes, please see the above examples.
Slang and Phrases of Native Speakers: Slang – Words highly informal of a particular social group of people, or words and phrases that are used in everyday informal speech but which are not regarded as standard English. P.S. They should not be used in formal business communication. Examples are: I haven’t a clue – to mean I don’t know; rip-off – to mean steal; paps – to mean an elderly person; wheels – to mean a car; bloke or chap – to mean a man; dosh or dough – to mean money; you done know – to mean you know; spliff – to mean Cannabis, joint, cigarette; undocumented – to mean no legal residence.
Idioms are also slang dialects. They are mostly colloquial or local language. They usually understand locally by social groups. Examples include: countries within the Kingdom – for part of the Netherlands group; sells like hot bread – for fast selling items; a piece of cake – easy to understand; petite monnaie – for small money (Haitian dialect); Curaçao local Papimento – basta-bon for I am feeling all right; mi-ta-bon for I’m feeling alright; Dominica local creole – papa bondieu for oh my God; St. Lucian creole –toute le monde for everyone; Jamaican local dialect – tel im for tell him (they hardly pronounced the (h); Antiguan local dialect – nam for eating; puppa for father, gal for girl in other Caribbean territories; etc.
Jargons are specialized vocabulary or trade talk. Laypeople will understand the meaning of Jargons in words or phrases that follow: Data – information assumed; database – set of data held in a computer; interface – meeting between; quantum leap – big advance; death-trap – very dangerous; debt – money; equity – shares; build – save; plagiarize – copy other people’s work; path – career.
Homophones: homophones are words that sounds the same but have different spellings and meaning. They cause many problems to foreign students, and other speakers of English, both in spoken and written language. Examples are: bean, bin, been, being; to, too, two; bear, beer, bare; cheer, chair; counsel, council; principal, principle; licence, license; dependent, dependant; practice, practise; desert, dessert; ensure, insure; naval, navel; straight, strait; storey, story; its, it’s; who, whose; continual, continous; credible, credulous; affect, effect; flair, flare.
Irregular Plural Forms or Nouns that create difficulties amongst foreign learners:
child children; man men; foot feet; mouse mice; goose geese; tooth teeth; louse lice; woman women; ox oxen; eye eyes; hand hands; sheep sheep; ewe ewe; hoof hooves; half halves; wolf wolves; knife knives; thief thieves; elf elves; roof roofs rooves; life lives; scarf scarfs, scarves; wife wives; turf turves; salmon salmon; swine swine; cod cod; deer deer; squid squid; lobster lobster.
Words ending in (f) or (fe), the (f) and (fe) are dropped to form plural.
Practical and Theoretical Phonetics:
The phoneme concept (1935), W.F. Waddel define phoneme as a group of sounds which have, in sense, no significant differences. Some sounds may be distinctive in meaning in one language and not in another. In English a phoneme is the smallest unit sound. The study of phonetics is a vital part of linguistics. The English alphabet consists of 26 letters from A to Z, 19 consonants, b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v x z, and 5 vowels, a e i o u. The w and y are consonant letters when they come before a vowel and y is a vowel when comes after a consonant letter. However, consonants are letters that don’t start with a vowel sound.
Syllable – A word or part of a word which contains one vowel sound, for example, meat has one syllable and meatball has two syllables. Hate has one syllable and hateful has two syllables. A student learner of English can use the list of words below to guide s/he into knowing the different sounds: Heat-heatless; town-townhall; neat-neatness; mat-mattress; beg-beggar; bread-breadpan; meat-meatless.
Vowel – A sound that you make with your lips and teeth open. One of the sounds represented in English by the letters a,e,i,o,u, and sometimes by the y sound.
Consonant – A sound that you make by partly stopping the air as it comes through your mouth, e.g. the letters that represent consonants sound. See the 19 consonants of the English alphabet above.
Phoneme – the smallest segment of sounds which can distinguish two words. For example, take two words pin and bin. These words only different at the beginning letter sounds because pin begins with /p/ and bin begins with /b/. This is the smallest segment sounds by which these words could be different and remain distinctive. Smaller division is not possible because English doesn’t sub-divide /p/ and /b/ sounds. Words such as pen and pin are only different in the vowel sounds. This is the smallest segment by which these two words are different. There are no English language sounds halfway between /e/ and /i/ sounds. However, /p/, /b/, /e/, /i/ are phonemes of English language. Phoneme symbols are usually put into slanted brackets or slashes. Please see above! Pair words such as pin and bin, pen and pin which are different by one phoneme are refer to as minimal pairs. More practice can be done with beginning word sounds such as bill and pill, and vowel sounds bell and bill.
Schwa- The Schwa is an up-side down /e/, like a 6 turns backwards between two slashes, or slanted brackets. It is the most common English sounds. It’s also a short verson of a small letter /e/ between two slashes or slanted brackets. It is a very short sound at the beginning of some words, e.g. energetic, abstract, obstruct, airplane, aeroplane, ago, attend, ever, evergreen, and elf. The schwa can be also stressed in a final position in words such as teacher, murderer, conquer, signature, doer, encyclopedia, counselor, computer, gardener, creditor, counter, colour, zephyr, beer and amateur.
Evaluative comments
The English language went through many changes. From the old days of the Viking, Normans, Anglo-Saxon, Latin and Greek, it survived to become the world leading language today. Modern English has introduced new lexical content and phrases that will make the language more profound to native and foreign speakers. The English language gets its super recognition from the translation of the Holy Bible by King James 1. No other language will ever defeat this purpose as the world greatest language. Linguistics and phonetics provided a vast amount of knowledge and communication to native speakers and foreign learners to make language distinctive and easy to learn.
Conclusion
Finally, to conclude this article I would like everyone to read and enjoy this report, in addition make linguistics science a chosen career in the near future.
Joseph Harvey
