u04a2 Questions #5 and #6

Question #5 (Freeman, Freeman pg 96)


There are 2 allophones of the phoneme /p/. They are /p/ and /p^h/…for example the aspirated /p^h/ sound in the word pin and the unaspirated /p/ sound in the word spin. For English language learners, if they have this phoneme in their first language, they will at times have problems producing the same allophones in another language.

Question #6  

I have lived in many different parts of the U.S. and Asia, but I still think the most fascinating parts of the English dialect comes from the Northeastern part of the United States. My dad is from Blackstone Massachusetts…and ever since I was a kid, I’ve always found his pronunciation of certain words both funny and interesting.  When he would speak to my Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents, or about the Boston Red Sox, it sounded to me, as if he was speaking a different language…the absence of the sound /r/ and local colloquial expressions left me both mystified and mesmerized with wonder. When my father was in the mood for grinders or wieners, I never knew he meant hoagies and hot dogs until I was in my teens.  The dialect may sound a bit rough, but I'm proud of my American blue collar roots. Having been exposed to that type of dialect from a young age, gave me a greater appreciation for movies like Good Will Hunting and The Fighter as well as understand the accents of actors like Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Mark Walberg in those movies.