One Sound, One Symbol: Phonetic Transcription in English Essay Example

English words are not spelt as they are pronounced; the pronunciation can also vary according to one’s regional accents as well as from one English-speaking country to another. Cases where English words are not spelt as pronounced can be seen in words like business, /bIzn? s/ and what, /w? t/. Rubba (2003) stated that it is important to remember that an IPA symbol always has the same sound which differs from English spelling.

For example, the English letter s has various sound values in English spelling, for instance the words that are pronounced as /s/ like 'so', 'bus' and the /z/ of words like 'easy', 'busy'. In IPA, the s in English letter always represents the sound /s/ in 'see', and 'bus'. The sounds represented by the letter s in 'easy', 'busy', are transcribed phonetically with /z/. Thus, this clearly shows that the English spelling has violates the principles of the phonetic transcription, “One Sound, One symbol” (Rubba, 2003).It is always a problem for English learners since they often find it hard when they discover some English words that do not actually follow the “One Sound, One Symbol” principle.

Hilton et al. , (1992) described “English is often considered to be an illogical language with no rhyme or reason to its spelling. ” In other words, pronunciation of a word does not necessarily matches its spelling and we can also have a sound make by several letter combinations. For instance, words like though, is pronounced as /??? / while cloud is pronounced as /ka? d/.Although both though and cloud have same medial vowels in English alphabetic characters (ou) but the pronunciations according to the IPA are different.

Confusion

can also occur when some of the English words that differ in terms of spelling but they shared the same pronunciation like the /? / sound in these words, store, /st? I/, August /? Ig? st/ and flaw, / fl? I/ ( Hilton et al. , 1992) The violation of the “One Sound, One Symbol” not only can be seen in the use of the vowels in the English words, it also applied to the consonants in the English words.Lutrin & Pincus,(2004). showed that the c in a word is usually pronounced as /k/ as in the word cat, /k? t/ but when it is followed by e, i, or y, it is pronounced as /s/ as in the word city, /s? ti/. Instead of the words mentioned before, as in cat and city, there are a few exceptions in some words where the /s/ sound is followed by e as in base, / be? s/ and horse, /h?? s/, but they still being pronounced as /s/. Furthermore, the words which initial English alphabetic characters that start with k and followed by e, I and y are pronounced as /k/.

For examples, words with initial English alphabetic characters ke, ki and ky as in ke - Kelvin, /kelv? n/, ki – kick, /k? k/ and ky – kyle, /ka? l/ are pronounced as /k/. For /f/ sound, there are varieties of pronunciation according to the English alphabetical characters used in the words. There are words that have different spelling but all of them are pronounced as /f/ like flower, /fla?? (r)/, cough, /c? f/ and phonetic, /f? ’net? k/. Besides, the g in a word that

is pronounced in English word like gosh, /g?? / is pronounced as /j/ in words like general, /d? nr? l/. (Lutrin & Pincus, 2006) Hilton & Hyder (1992) stated that a pronunciation of a word in English also differs according to the origins of the words.

The evidences can be found in several words that had undergone adaptation and being used in English Language in our daily lives. The words are usually originated from other countries like Greek and French. The words that had undergone adaptation in English words usually do not followed the “One Sound, One Symbol” principles. Words like ache, /e? k/ and chaos, /ke?? /, which have ch at any position whether it is at initial, medial or final position of the words are pronounced as /k/. While words that are originated from Greek are pronounced as /k/ when there are ch in the words, words that are originated from French that have ch are pronounced as /? / as in words like machine, /m? ’?? n/ and parachute, /p? r?? u? t/. (Lutrin & Pincus, 2006).

Confusion always occur since the ch in english words are usually pronounced as /t? / as in church, /t??? t? / and child, /t? a? ld/ (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 7th ed. , 2005).Furthermore, English spelling also violates the rule of “One Sound, One Symbol” with silent letters in certain words like knuckle, /’n ? kl/ whereby the /k/ sound in the initial position is a silent sound and in the word heir, /e? (r)/ whereby the /h/ sound is a silent sound. (Hilton & Hyder, 1992) Several examples above have shown that English spelling has violated

the principle of “One Sound, One Symbol. ” English Spelling is different from IPA whereby the words are not pronounced according to its spelling unlike the IPA symbol that always has the same sound value.Should English spelling be made more phonetic? The conflict arises due to the irregularity and inconsistency of English spelling as opposed to the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) which is governed by the principle “One Sound, One Symbol.

” where an IPA symbol always has the same sound value. According to Upward (1988), consistency should be the core principle of an alphabetic writing system where the symbols should persistently represent sounds, but this principle has not been systematically applied in the development of the writing system of English.In other words, English words are not spelled phonetically as compared to languages such as Spanish whose spelling has been reformed to sustain a relatively high degree of correspondence between speech and writing. Therefore, English spelling should be made more phonetic in order to accommodate to the needs of learners especially non-native learners (Upward, 1988) and to foster international intelligibility (Sweet, 1990). In the era of globalization, English has become the lingua franca for most of the countries around the world.Hence, the English spelling or traditional orthography becomes an international medium of practical communication as indicated by Upward (1988).

However, native and non-native speakers differ greatly in learning the pronunciation of the language, for example native speakers has usually learnt effortlessly and unconsciously whether to rhyme bow with low or with cow while the non-native speaker usually has to make conscious efforts to master such sound-symbol correspondences (Upward, 1988). The need to make English spelling more phonetic

is therefore essential to enable the mastery of written language and effective communication.In addition, Sweet (1990) noted that the shortcomings of present English orthography are the presence of ambiguity and inconsistency. Ambiguity is evident in the use of one symbol for several distinct sounds, as in the letter “c” for cat /k? t/ and city /s? ti/ which is used to represent two distinct sounds which are /k/ and /s/, or of different symbols for one sound, for example /f/ for flower, /fla?? (r)/, cough, /c? f/ and phonetic, /f? ’net? k/. This indicates the violation of the basic principle of all rational spelling where every sound is denoted by an invariable symbol which can be either a single letter or a digraph as in /t? by “ch”.

Consequently, the inconsistency results in the increased number of arbitrary symbols which makes their acquisition more difficult due to the conflicting associations of ideas (Sweet, 1990). Therefore, English words should be spelt more phonetically to avoid inconsistency in order to encourage international intelligibility. In conclusion, English spelling should be made more phonetic to prevent inconsistency and promote international intelligibility for all English language learners.