Reflection week 3

In week 3 we have learned about pronunciation, production of sound which are air stream mechanisms, articulatory organs, larynx functions. Besides that, I learned about the categorization and description of sounds, and also the articulatory and acoustic parameters of segmental in English.

Each day we may utter tens of thousands of words without stopping to consider what we are doing or how we do it. Although communication through speech is our most common form of communication, the study of the production of speech is the farthest removed of all the branches of linguistics from our intuitions about language. We have intuition about the grammaticality of sentences, and the meaning and structure of words, but we have few intuitions about how we produce speech sounds. 

For example, few speakers have any precise notion of what is physically involved in the production of the word “eye” (which consists of a single speech sound), or the production of the two sounds that constitute the word “me” .

      This lack of intuition where the production of speech sounds is concerned is all the more surprising when we consider that we often make social judgements about people from their speech. We may locate them geographically and socially from their pronunciation of a single sentence. Yet we often have no idea, in precise phonetic terms, why the speech of one speaker differs markedly from that of another. Furthermore, although some speakers are able to mimic successfully the speech of others, they may have no precise idea of how they achieve this. I have found an interesting phonemic chart at this website http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/activities/phonemic-chart.

For week 3, we have completed two activities which are making our own mime video and present two tongue twisters in front of the class. My group had produced a mime video entitle “The Teeth” and we have do our best for this video. We watched the mime video that had been done by every group and I found that all the mime were funny and interesting. I enjoy it so much where I can see every group had done their best for this activity. Here is our video.

Besides, all of us has done tongue twister where every group have different and interesting tongue twister to present in front of the class for the next period. My group had present on these two tongue twisters. I have practice two of this tongue twister and can say it as fast as I can many times. It was a very enjoyable and interesting activity where the whole class has to practise all the tongue twister which have been present by all the group. 

First tongue twister 

How many cookies could a good cook cook

If a good cook could cook cookies?

A good cook could cook

as much cookies as a good cook

who could cook cookies.

Second tongue twister  

Six sick hicks

nick six slick

bricks with picks and sticks.

So, basically a  tongue-twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. Some tongue-twisters produce results which are humorous (or humorously vulgar) when they are mispronounced, while others simply rely on the confusion and mistakes of the speaker for their amusement value.

Tongue-twisters may rely on rapid alternation between similar but distinct phonemes (e.g., s [s] and sh [ʃ]), unfamiliar constructs in loanwords, or other features of a spoken language in order to be difficult to articulate. For example, the following sentence was claimed as "the most difficult of common English-language tongue-twisters" by William Poundstone.

The seething sea ceaseth and thus the seething sea sufficeth us.

Many tongue-twisters use a combination of alliteration and rhyme. They have two or more sequences of sounds that require repositioning the tongue between syllables, then the same sounds are repeated in a different sequence. An example of this is the song Betty Botter. 

Betty Botter bought a bit of butter.
The butter Betty Botter bought was a bit bitter
And made her batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter makes better batter.
So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter
Making Betty Botter's bitter batter better

More examples of interesting tongue twisters can be found at this web site http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/en.htm.