Introduction of Phonology

What is Phonology?

Phonology is one of branch of Linguistics that tell us about the study of sound patterns.  It is the study of different sound and the way they come together  to form words and speech such as the comparison of the sound.  So, in the subject of Phonology, we’ll study about The Phonem of English (it means the languages which have different sounds or similar sounds), The Consonants of English (the sounds which its flows of air have obstacle), The Vowel of English (is a type of letter in alphabeth which comes from the lungs, through the vocal  cords, and is not blocked, so there is no friction “A,I,U,E,O, and (sometimes) Y” and Consonant Clusters (is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel).

- The Phonem of English

We can take examples of this subject, If we say the words :

Pin,        Spin,        Nip,

We realise that the ‘p’ sounds are all slightly different when we pronounce it. The ‘p’ in “pin” is pronounced with a lot of breath, the ‘p’ in “spin” has qualities of the ‘b’ in “bin” and the ‘p’ in “nip” is pronounced as if it were followed by a short vowel. All these 'p' in exactly the same way, but the differences aren't sufficiently great to be used to distinguish meaning in English. In  an other example:

Din,         Den,

Kin,         Ken,

Tin,         Ten,

We say that the vowels /t/ and /e/ are different phonemes.

- The Consonants of English

In English we have the word pet and bet. This words differ fairly fundamentally inmeaning but as far as the sounds go, they differ only in the initial segment. The sounds /p/ and /b/  can be shown to distinguish meaning in many pairs of words . Allow us to isolatee the following consonant phonemes : /p,b,t,d,g,f,v,l,m,n,q,ô,s, ʃ,r,h/

- The Vowel of English

For example: Which has the phonetics symbol /i/ is a close, long, front vowel, made with spread lips. It occurs in such words as “eat”, “see”, and etc.

- Consonant Clusters

In English for example the groups /spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word splits.

The longest possible initial cluster is there consonants, as in split/’splıt/ and strudel /’ʃtru:dəl/ all beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/ and ending with /l/ or /r/.

References :Loreto Todd's book "An Introduction to Linguistics", 

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/phonology