CENTRAL UNIVERSITY

NAME: Ricardo Altamirano

COURSE: 3RD “C”

DATE: 03/12/19

ESSAY

These videos are an introduction to phonetics in English, a linguistic area that

focuses on vowel and consonant sounds in a particular language. It´s a guideline in
topics such as dialects, clusters, vowel sounds and how spelling and pronunciation
work in English.

The Chaos of English Pronunciation by Gerard Nolst Trenité is a nice video about
the hard task we as English learners have when learning its correct pronunciation.
It´s an unique language since most of its words have a different way of being
pronounced. Even for him, Gerard, as a native speaker, this is troublesome and he
sincerely ends up saying just to give up with this.

The second video was English Accents - Bonus Lesson on the Pronunciation of
Vowel Sounds, it focuses on the varieties of English all over the world, especially in
the U.S, U.K and New Zealand. It´s interesting how different dialects can change
how a word sounds, and how the “r” at the end in English has a lot of ways of being
pronounced.

The video “Consonant Clusters -- American English Pronunciation” was about

clusters, especially the ones that begin with s, and the you add the other
consonants: tr, pr, kr and so on. The teacher mentioned the fact that this is harder
for Spanish and Portuguese native speakers because we always add an e sound
at the beginning of this cluster.

The video “Master Spoken English - Rhythm Patterns and Consonant Clusters”,
was about how to pronounce the past tense in different contexts, since it´s not the
same to pronounce the ed sound in stopped like in bribed, or the “z” sound against
the “s” sound, when there are plurals, possessives or third persons.

This video called “Orthographic, Phonetic and Phonemic Transcription (PV).”

Shows how the three systems in linguistics can be useful to represent human
sounds. Obviously, the orthographic transcription is much more known than the
phonemic and phonetic one. Though, as English teachers we must learn how this
phonemic systems works.
The video named “Learn Pronunciation of English Vowel Sounds 1” is an
introduction of the pronunciation of English vowel sounds, the types that we can
find out, and the way they must be pronounced. Also there are some examples
about how to relate each sound with its respective spelling form.

The next video called “Pronunciation of English Vowel Sounds 2 – Front Vowels”
focuses on how this set of front vowels work, and in which way they are related to
each other. The similarity is that the tongue is visible when speaking, this is
because of the tongue position that it needs to take in order to make the sound.

The following video of the series is “Pronunciation of English Vowel Sounds 4 -

Central Vowels - Part 1”, this is about how to make the correct position and
pronunciation when we say words with central vowels. Central vowels are more
neutral, and the position of the tongue is central, generally it´s called a relaxed
position.

The last video in this series is “Pronunciation of English Vowel Sounds 3 - Back
Vowels - Part 1”. This is about how back vowels are used in English. We need to
make our lips rounded, though not all these vowels need to make a perfect
rounded form. The tongue needs to pull back, so it cannot be seen when speaking.

The last video is called “American English Diphthongs - IPA - Pronunciation -

International Phonetic Alphabet (PV)”. This is about how to pronounce correctly
clusters in English, in this case called diphthongs as well. Besides, this is about the
IPA, or the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is used when learning non-
phonetic languages as English. Its symbols help us to get the exact sound, even
when are not native speakers of that language.

So, in conclusion, these are the first steps in the study of English phonetics. It´s a
bit harder because we are not native speakers, but with the help of the IPA and
other guides we surely can master not only the English sounds, but the language
we choose.