Linguists divide the study
of spoken language into two categories--phonology and grammar.
Phonology
is
the study of sounds. Grammar
is how the sounds are used to make sense.
Phonology
The smallest unit of sound
that can be altered to change the meaning of a word is called a
phoneme
. In
English, for example, the words gin, kin,
pin, sin, tin,
and win all have different meaning due to the fact that the
initial sound, or phoneme, is different. Phonemes do not have meaning by
themselves. The sounds represented by the g, k, p, s, t, and w in the words above are
meaningless alone but they can change the meaning of words.
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Different languages may use somewhat different
sets of phonemes. For instance, Polynesian languages usually use about 15 phonemes
and generally favor vowel clusters rather than consonant clusters in words. This
pattern can be observed in the Polynesian words Kauai
,
Maui
, and Samoa
.
In contrast, English speakers use 40-46 phonemes and
often combine consonants into clusters. This can be heard in the
American English words schedule
, months
, and shrill
. The San languages of
southwest Africa (spoken
by the Ju/'hoansi
and others) use some sounds that are not found in English or most other
languages elsewhere. These are click sounds
that serve as
consonants. The Ju/'hoansi language has four distinct
kinds of clicks that are produced by sharply pulling the tongue away from
different locations in the mouth.
If your language does not have some of the sounds of another language, it is usually difficult for you to hear the differences and to pronounce them correctly. For this reason, the R and L sounds in English are difficult to distinguish for native Japanese speakers. Try making these two sounds and think about the shape of your mouth and of the placement of your tongue. They are quite similar for both sounds. Native English speakers rarely have difficulty in distinguishing the R and L sounds because they have been familiar with them from early childhood. They are experts at hearing the difference. However, English speakers have difficulty with unfamiliar sounds in other languages, such as the San language clicks mentioned above and the V and B sounds in some Spanish dialects.
Learning and using the sounds of a language can be significantly complicated by the writing system. English has more than 1100 combinations of letters that are used to produce the 40 commonly used sounds of the spoken language. It becomes a problem when words share the same phoneme but spell it differently. This occurs with the "e" sound in me, tea, tree, key, country, piece, and reprise. In addition, many English words have the same letter combination but are not pronounced the same. This is the case with mint and pint, clove and love, as well as cough and bough. By comparison, the 33 sounds used in Italian are spelled with only 25 letter combinations. Italian words are spelled just as they are pronounced. Consequentially, Italians rarely have to ask each other "how do you spell your name." It is not surprising that English is a far more difficult language to learn. It is also much more difficult for people who are dyslexics.
Perhaps, the most complicated writing system is used in Japan today. It combines symbol elements from several different writing systems, sometimes in the same sentence--kanji, katakana, hiragana, and the Latin script that is used in the written form of most European languages. Kanji is a variant of the Chinese writing system. Katakana is a derivative of Kanji that is used for words borrowed from other languages and for special purposes, such as telegrams. Hiragana originated as a cursive form of katakana. Use of the Latin script is complicated by the fact that there usually are several different ways of spelling the same word. These various symbol elements may be written from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. Adding further confusion is the fact that the kanji symbols sometimes have several different meanings. Educated Japanese are expected to know about 2000 kanji character symbols. Complicating the matter is the fact that Japanese writing is rapidly changing as it adapts to the massive influx of new words and concepts from the Western World. As a result, older people in Japan, who were educated several decades ago, usually have difficulty reading popular newspapers and magazines targeted at teenagers and young adults.
Grammar
Grammar is divided into two
categories for analysis--morphology
and syntax
.
Morphology
is concerned with
how the sounds (phonemes) are combined by language into larger units called
morphemes
.
Morphemes are the smallest combination of sounds that have meaning and cannot be
broken into smaller meaningful units. Words can be one or more morphemes. For
example, the English word cow is one morpheme while cowboy is composed of two (cow and boy). Some morphemes have meaning but can not stand alone in
standard English like cow. The prefix dis in the word dislike is an example
of such a bound morpheme.
Morphemes in the form of words are combined into larger utterances in normal speech. These larger groupings are phrases and sentences. Syntax refers to the standardized set of rules that determine how words should be combined to make sense to speakers of a language. All native speakers of a language learn the basic rules of syntax as they grow up. Even before entering school, people acquire these rules from their family and friends. In school, they are taught to modify and augment them to coincide with patterns more acceptable to the society.
Different languages are unintelligible not only because the vocabulary is alien but also because the syntax rules are different. In English, word order is particularly critical to changing meaning. For example the words you, are, and there can be combined in three different ways to alter meaning:
| There you are. You are there. Are you there? |
