Phonetics and phonology both deal with the study of human speech sounds. Phonetics is concerned with the physical side of speech, such as the actual production of speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), the acoustic properties of speech sounds (acoustic phonetics), and how sound waves are converted into linguistic information (auditory phonetics). On the other hand, phonology studies sound patterns; the organisation of sounds in a language. For example, in English, /nt/ and /dm/ can appear within or at the end of words (rent, admit), but not at the beginning. Diachronic (historical) phonology examines and constructs theories about the changes and modifications in speech sounds and sound systems over a period of time. For example, it is concerned with the process by which the English words seaand see, once pronounced with different vowel sounds (as indicated by the spelling), have come to be pronounced alike today. Naturally, there is a strong interdependency between these two areas of linguistics. So, to sum up, phonetics studies the sounds in speech while phonology studies how these sounds are used to create words in a given language.

The distinctive accents that many learners of a foreign language have while speaking the target language result from differences between the phonological and phonetic systems of their languages and those of the target language. From birth, and possibly before, until the moment we establish our own stable phonological system in our mother tongue, we learn to recognise and produce the distinctive sounds of our own language. As native speakers, we do not need to think about how to modulate our vocal tracts, or any of the other organs involved in speech, to produce sounds. This, however, might not be the case when speaking a foreign language. 

Contrastive segments

Human languages in general use a rather small number of contrastive segments to construct words. These contrastive segments are called phonemes. The vowels /e/ and /a/, for instance, are phonemes of Spanish, as they differentiate meanings as in peso (weight) and paso (step); /p/ and /k/ are also phonemes of Spanish; peso vs. queso (cheese). Although Spanish orthography is quite phonemic as described above in Orthography (that is, a letter represents a phoneme), this is not always the case. The phoneme /k/, for example, has various orthographic representations; c– casa (house), qu– queso, k – kilo.

Spanish, English, German, Chinese and any other language may have segmental contrasts in their own systems that do not exist in other languages. The native speakers of those languages will have no difficulties producing or perceiving those distinctive sounds, while the native speakers of languages in which those contrasts do not exist, will encounter some difficulties. The words eat and it in English, for instance, are pronounced differently; [iːt] and [ɪt] respectively. /iː/ and /ɪ/ are in phonological opposition in English, while in Spanish there is no such opposition. Therefore, the Spanish speaker of English might have difficulty trying to make a difference between the two.

A further difficulty for language learners is that a given phoneme is not always realised in the same way. The actual pronunciation may depend on various factors such as the speed of speech, surrounding sounds, or the position in the word or syllable. Foreign language learners must be made aware of this variation in order to be able to perceive and pronounce the sounds of Spanish accurately. 

Activity

Explain the pronunciation of the phoneme /d/ in Spanish 

You can check your answers in Section 6. 

Activity

Listen to the phrase the day pronounced by a native speaker of Spanish. Does she pronounce the consonants correctly? 

Audio: the day

You can check your answers in Section 6.