Have you ever tried to teach a
European or American friend some Arabic (or
are you that friend yourself)? Have you wondered why they struggle so much to
articulate Arabic words like hiwar (dialogue) and thaalab (fox)? Or perhaps,
despite your coaching, they frequently butcher your name when trying to
pronounce it, even though it seems like a wonderfully easy task for you.
اضافة اعلان
According to
multiple studies on the phonetics and phonology of different languages (see
papers by Dr Catherine Lai and Professor Mits Ota), this pronunciation
predicament is mainly attributed to the lack of specific phonetic items in a
person’s mental lexicon. In other words, the Arabic sound “aain” is not present
in English, which may be why English speakers often pronounce it simply as
“ah”. The same is true for the hard “h” sound, which may be rendered,
comically, as a fit of coughing instead of the proper glottal fricative (i.e.,
the consonant that is pronounced by producing friction in your throat).
Phonetics is the
scientific study of speech sounds, however, people do not necessarily need to
study this field in-depth in order to understand the impact of phonetics on
day-to-day life. In an interview with
Jordan News, Dr Majid Tarawneh, an
assistant professor of linguistics at the
American University of Madaba who
specializes in critical discourse analysis, commented on the importance of
phonetics in our daily communication with others. Our speech sounds combine to
form words, which if changed or tampered with, may result in completely
different meanings, potentially causing miscommunication.
This is why
helping children learn their mother language is important. Speech sounds are
the building blocks of language, which is why babies start out by repeating
consonants such as “bababa” and “mamama” — they might not actually be calling
for their parents, but instead, just practicing the sounds of their language.
Slowly, toddlers
will begin to grasp the meaning behind words and sentences that are formed from
these building blocks. They get there by making mistakes — lots of them.
Thankfully, they are in the stage of life where such mistakes are met with
coos, smiles, and proud exclamations from their elders, encouraging them to
keep trying.
Not only that, but
biologically speaking, children may have an easier time learning new languages
in comparison to adults. According to Noam Chomsky, the American linguist known
as “the father of modern linguistics”, children have a basic template for
learning languages that is embedded in our genes. But learning a language is
shockingly similar to learning a sport — the older you are, the less likely it
will work out smoothly. This basically comes down to a question of mental
flexibility.
Tarawneh pointed
to the critical period hypothesis: the idea that, during a specific stage of
biological development, people are better equipped to pick up certain
behavioral patterns, specifically in regards to language acquisition.
This certainly
seems to be the case with pronunciation: the physical speech articulators
(i.e., the tongue, the palate, the alveolar ridge, the teeth and gums, and the
lips) are developing in tangent with language ability. Think of it like the
lenient limbs of a child in a gymnastics class — it is much easier for them to
do the splits and bend in almost-unnatural ways, with little to no pain.
When learning a
second language, especially as an adult, it is a completely different story.
Tarawneh recounted the experience of a second-language Portuguese learner who
suffered from jaw pain for the first few months of learning the language. This
was because, as an adult, the individual’s speech articulators had to be
reconfigured to pronounce the sounds of Portuguese, some of which were
completely new and unfamiliar.
“The articulators
need to be shaped in a totally different manner than from one’s mother-tongue,”
Tarawneh explained. He compared the situation to walking normally, then
suddenly needing to do splits instead.
However, knowing
the phonetic alphabet of a language before learning the language can make the
process much easier. What does this mean? If you are an English speaker, you
will likely have an easier time learning Dutch than learning Arabic. This is,
in part, attributed to phonetic alphabets. The English and Dutch alphabets are
much more similar than the English and Arabic ones. Many words in English and
Dutch have similar pronunciation: the English words clock and cookie are klok and
kookje in Dutch. Meanwhile, an English speaker might struggle learning Hindi or
Urdu, both of which have a very different phonetic alphabet.
The importance of
phonetics also goes beyond pronunciation. “Without an understanding of
phonetics, one cannot effectively read and spell,” said Dr Louisa Moats, an
author and literacy expert, in an article published in 2020.
Turns out that
languages, and everything that depends on them, are nothing without their
phonetic building blocks.
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