Assignment (u04a2)

5.  There are two district allophonic variations  of the phoneme /p/ in English.  By contrasting the pronunciation of the two words spot and pot we will see the difference.  In the word pot you feel a definite explosion of air on your hand as the phoneme escapes your mouth.  However, when the word spot is pronounced, the puff of air is no longer there.  In the word pot the /p/ is aspirated, in the word spot it is non-aspirated. In Spanish, /p/ is also not aspirated.  I work very hard with the pronunciation of this with my students.  They will often hold paper to the mouths and practice saying words with /p/ and getting their paper to stay still for the correct pronunciation in Spanish.  It could be a challenge for a Spanish speaker to create the explosion of the /p/ in the word pot since they don't make that variation of sound in Spanish.

6.  When speaking with my cousin Danielle, I always notice a few things about her speech that are peculiar to my Pennsylvanian ears.  Danielle is from Michigan and uses words like pop instead of soda and adds a subtle  /k/ sound to the end of many words ending in -ing.  These are just two example of the differences in our speech.  In regard to the different dialects of English and the training that exists to reduce dialect, I would hope that we can appreciate the dropped /r/ of Ha(r)va(r)d, and be willing to take our time as we listen to the Southern drawl.  Dialects make us all unique and is not a quality that should be lost.  I do know that the New England regional dialect is often perceived as being the most trans-dialectal and most desirable in business and in education. Any language has dialects, and an English learner would hopefully be able to understand just as there might be a difference regionally with their language in vocabulary and pronunciation that the same differences exist throughout American English.  These differences certainly also exist in the comparison of American to British to Australian English as well.