Application Questions

Application Questions

Freeman and Freeman p. 96

5) The phoneme /m/ has two allophones in English: [m] as in make and [m̩] as in blossom. After doing research online, I found that many other languages have the phoneme/m/, but I could not find much information relating to the allophones. For example, I looked at Spanish phonology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology) and it explained that in the language, the /m/ sound is pronounced as a nasal phoneme, such as in the Spanish word cama, which means “bed”.  After reading about the Spanish language, it makes me think that they have the allophone [m] but not the allophone [m̩] (a syllabic nasal) since I did not read anything about it. I would like to learn more about allophones in other languages, but unfortunately did not find much information about the phoneme /m/.

6) I think learning about different dialects is interesting. Although I do not know anyone from the southern United States, I have heard some people speak in this dialect on television and have read about it. When people from the South speak, it is said they have a “twang” to their voice, which makes the words sound as if they are drawn out in a type of nasal speech. The vocabulary pronounced in the southern states is different from other places around the Unites States. Words from the Upper South that are interesting are “snake doctor”, which means “dragonfly” and “egg turner”, which means “spatula”. In the Lower South the residents may refer to their grandmother and grandfather as “big mamma” and “big daddy”. In reading about the Upper South, it is fascinating to realize that they disregard “standard” ways to conjugate verbs, such as with the verb “know”; they will use it in a sentence such as “They knowed I went to the store” instead of saying “They knew I went to the store” (https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/downing/www/course/350-192/printsouth.html). Although dialects of different regions may be different, it does not mean one dialect is correct and the other is not. I suppose in the professional world, people view certain dialects, such as the Southern dialect, as being wrong because they do not sound “normal”. I am not sure if there is a standard dialect because not everybody grew up in the same community. If people wish to enter a professional environment, I think it is important for them to speak with vocabulary and syntax that everyone around them can understand, although it would be fine to pronounce the words in the same manner with their own accent of their region.