The Story of 7R-Block

Setting: at an upscale restaurant taking a customer's order, we now get to the drinks.


Me: And what would you like to drink?

Customer: "7R-Block."

Thoughts ran through my head: What the heck is that? It sounds more like a tax firm than a drink.

Me: Hmm, I've never heard of that one. Is it a mixed drink?

Customer: I know you have it, I order it every time I come here.

Me: Okay, just hold on for a second, I'll be right back.

I went back to the kitchen and asked the other workers if they have heard of a drink that is called 7R Block. Perhaps it is a "secret code" used by the employees that I haven't been taught yet or maybe some kind of slang.

Me (to employees): We've got someone wanting a "7R-Block." Do we have anything by that name here?

The employees haven't heard of it either, and recommended that I give the customer a menu with our complete drink listings and have him point out what he is referring to.

Me: Here is our complete menu. You can point out exactly what you want.

What did the customer point at?
(highlight the black text by dragging your mouse over it to reveal it)

Sauvignon Blanc

More digraphs: TH and WH

The TH sound

Continuing on the topic of digraphs, "th" is a example of a digraph that is used very frequently in English. There are two kinds of th sounds in English. What follows will be the IPA symbol used to represent the sound and some example words.



This symbol (called theta) represents the soft "th" sound occurring in words like thin, thigh, with, and breath.



This symbol (called eth) represents the hard "th" sound in words such as then, thy, there, and breathe.

There is no set rule for determining if the soft or hard "th" is used, it must be memorized.

The main difference between these two sounds is that the former is voiceless and the latter is voiced, just like [s] is voiceless and [z] is voiced.

The "th" sound is not at all common in many languages, despite being used very frequently in English. For speakers of languages that do not have the "th" sound, it is often perceived as an [s] or [z].


WH-words

Another common digraph in English is WH. You know many of them as interrogative pronouns, sometimes called the "5W" words (who, what, where, when, why).


WH and HW

Most people see WH-words as taking just a [w] sound and leaving the [h] to be silent. However, did you know that for some dialects of English, the WH digarph is pronounced as if it were spelled "HW"?

This phenomenon is known as the whine/wine merger, as the h in WH words used to always be pronounced as [hw]. It is named as such because those words are no longer homophones after WH was realized with just a [w] sound and not [hw].

Note: for the "5W" words (who, what, where, when, why): this does not apply to the word who since it takes an [h] sound all the time (with the W silent) and not a [w] sound like the other four words.

For those that are using the "HW" sound, the [h] is often hard to notice, you have to listen very carefully as there is an initial, brief burst of air. Speakers that ignore the H in WH words often cannot tell if the other person is pronouncing the H.
Most of the time it is not a true [h] sound (as in the word hill), so a special IPA symbol is used, an upside-down w [ʍ] to represent the [hw].

2 letters, 1 sound: Digraphs

Two letters (in written form) can represent a single sound. These are known as digraphs. You probably know them as ch, sh, th, and the like.

English doesn't have a single letter to represent the initial sound ("ch") of the word child, so it must use two letters. Recognizing a digraph is one of the many difficulties in learning a language. For example, take the "ch" sound as mentioned above. One CANNOT simply read it as "a 'c' sound followed by an 'h' sound" - it is a completely different sound altogether.

Here's how the some of the digraphs are represented in phonetic transcription (e.g. using IPA):
Most of the time, only one symbol is used because it represents just a single sound, even though it takes two letters in the written form.

The "sh" sound (as in shell) is represented by [ʃ].
The "ch" sound (as in church) is represented by [tʃ]. Two symbols are used but it is still a single sound. It is actually a combination of the "t" and "sh" sounds. Try making a "t" sound and a "sh" sound simultaneously and the result will be a "ch" sound.

In some dictionaries and texts, [š] and [č], are used to denote the "sh" and "ch" sounds, respectively.

There are many more digraphs, and they also exist in languages other than English.

Vowels and musical languages

Even though we only write 5 vowels, English has as many as 15 vowel sounds! (this can vary depending on dialect)

What's useful about the consonants and vowels of a language?

Although French has nasalized vowels, making them difficult to pronounce for many English speakers, French is a very musical language. This is because words tend to flow from one word to the next with no pause in between them. In situations where there would be a pause, French requires that sounds be added or words changed. This is known as liaison.

Spanish has a lot of vowels and could be considered a musical language.

Even more so, Italian is considered the traditional musical language. This is due to the fact that most words end in a vowel. Not only does this make it a very suitable language for opera, it also means that once you are familiar with its rhythms, it is a comparatively easy language to pronounce. Unlike English, Italian has predictable pronunciation. Every letter has a specific sound, and there is not much difference between Italian spelling and pronunciation.

On the other hand, German does not really sound musical. Long word lengths, hard sounds for the consonants, plus many consonant clusters make the language difficult.

Consonants and Vowels

What's the difference between a consonant and a vowel?

In grade school, I'm pretty sure you've been taught that there are 5 vowels: AEIOU. The rest are consonants. However, this distinction fails to take into account the sounds of the letters. There are more sounds in English than there are letters (in the written form). The sounds and letters of a particular language do not always form a 1 to 1 correspondence, and this is why we must use 2 letters to represent a single sound (such as "sh").

How we produce speech sounds

The process in which we produce sound by using our vocal tract is much like that of a wind instrument. Each sound differs from another sound by a unique combination of features: the way you shape your mouth and tongue and move parts of the vocal apparatus when you make the sound. Air coming from the lungs passes through the vocal tract, which shapes it into different sounds. Then the air exits the vocal tract through the mouth and/or nose.

What differentiates a consonant and a vowel in terms of speech sounds?

Quite simply: Consonants are pronounced by obstructing the airflow through the vocal tract.

(Note: the details of how to pronounce every sound is beyond the scope of this site)

Example:
The [p] sound is made by obstructing air at the lips. When you say the word put, air is built up behind the lips and then released.

On the other hand, vowels are different from consonant sounds in that they are produced by passing air through different shapes of the mouth and different positions of the tongue and lips.

Examples:
For the "ahhh" sound (the vowel in the word pot, IPA [ɑ]) the tongue's position is in the lower back of the mouth.
For the "eeeee" sound (the vowel in the word be, IPA [i]) the tongue's position is in the upper front of the mouth. (This is why we say cheese when we take pictures!)

Xmas

(Ok, I lied, one more holiday themed post before I take a break :))

Why do we use the abbreviation Xmas for Christmas?

It originates from the Greek letter chi, which looks similar to an X. Since this letter (X) represented a "k" or "ks" sound in ancient Greek, it was used as an abbreviation for Christ. Though there may be some controversy over the usage of Xmas, it is not meant to be looked at as a way to "remove" Christ from Christmas.

The letter X can also represent "cross" or "trans" as in:

xfer, xlate = transfer, translate
X-out, X-over = cross out, crossover

How do you pronounce Xmas?

Should you try to pronounce the shortened form like "eks-mas" or just say "Christmas"?

Going slightly off topic:

Words that start with vowels usually take "an" as their indefinite article. Of course there are exceptions, like the word university. While it is spelled with a "u", it is actually a "y" sound. Thus, "a" is used and not "an".

We can use this information to find out more about the Xmas pronunciation:

What was mentioned above is a method in determining one's pronunciation of a word based on writing (barring typos). If one writes "an Xmas", they are pronouncing it "eks-mas", even though the written form starts with X, there's a vowel sound initially. Otherwise, for "a Xmas", we can assume "Christmas" is pronounced.

A quick google search reveals the following:
"a xmas" : 455,000 results
"an xmas" : 181,000 results

It seems that the traditional pronunciation for Xmas ("Christmas") is more common.

It would be interesting to know how you pronounce Xmas. Would you say "eks-mas" only in informal settings, or would you not bother with that pronunciation at all?

I'll get back to more topics on phonetics after the holidays :)
In the meantime, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Putting this on hold for now, apologies for no new posts.
I am quite busy at the moment and won't be able to make any more posts for a while. There will be more topics on phonetics soon to come.

Phonetics

The study of human speech sounds is called phonetics.

Phonetic alphabets are used to represent the sounds we speak. Words can have more letters than sounds and vice versa. In English, what is written can vary greatly from what is pronounced. The number of sounds and letters in a word are not always equal.

Words that contain the same number of sounds and letters:
car
bat
stop

Words that contain more letters than sounds:
laugh
cough
where


The need for a phonetic alphabet

An example of a phonetic alphabet which is widely used is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Dictionaries often uses a modified version of this phonetic alphabet in their pronunciation keys, since it easier to read than IPA. By writing in a phonetic alphabet, one can determine the pronunciation of ANY word, no matter the language.

Of course, not every language uses ALL the sounds that are possible.

There exist sounds in other languages which do not occur in English. How this affects borrowed words is that we usually 'approximate' the sounds that don't exist into the closest sound the does exist in English. Example: the final consonant sound in the German word Bach is usually pronounced with a [k] sound in English, but is actually a different (although similar) sound, represented by [x] in IPA.

Conversely, there are sounds that occur in English that do not occur in other languages. Example: French does not have the "th" sound as in thin or the (IPA [θ] and [ð], respectively) so French speakers may perceive such words as having an [s] or [z] sound.

Sounds vs. spelling

Pronunciation is not predictable in English. It may be more predictable in other languages, but there are many situations in English where the same sequence of letters can make a different sound altogether. The obvious disadvantage is that it can make the language much more difficult to learn. However, there is an advantage to unpredictable pronunciation. It can improve reading comprehensibility by keeping the spelling stable. Here's an example: note the different sounds of "s" for the words cats and dogs. The former takes an s sound and the latter takes a z sound, but both are spelled with s.

Some more fun with sounds and spelling

Note the bolded letters in the following sentence all make a different sound, despite the identical spelling:

She said you laid the plaid tie on the chair.


In the following word pairs, just one letter is changed but the pronunciation is significantly altered:

encourage -> entourage
revenges -> revenues
karate -> karats
hideous -> hideout
ballets -> bullets
telephone -> telephony

Same word, opposite meaning

There exist many words whose meanings are opposites of themselves.

You may ask, How can a word be an antonym of itself? Through polysemy and homonymy, a word that is pronounced or spelled the same way can have opposite meanings. A word that is an antonym of itself is called a contronym.

A commonly known contronym one is dust (verb). The two opposite meanings of dust are:
1. remove fine particles: Please dust the drawers to keep them clean.
2. cover with fine particles: He dusted the cookies with sugar.

Seed (verb) is another one:
1. remove seeds from: Seed the watermelon before eating.
2. distribute seeds; to sow seeds

To "X" something is a phrase often used colloquially. Here are its opposite meanings:
1. select: X your desired items on the list.
2. cancel/eliminate: Please X out the items you don't want.

Breaking words down in more than one way

There are some cases in which morphemes can be ambiguous.

Take the following word:

unionized

The more familiar meaning is "formed into a union". The other, less commonly known meaning comes from chemistry: "not converted into ions"; it's actually the word ionized with the un- prefix. This is an example of a homograph, as the words can have two pronunciations and different meanings altogether but are spelled the same.

The root words are different: in the first case, it's union, and in the second case it's ion. Here's the morpheme breakdown of both meanings of unionized:

unionized:

union : root word
-ize : changes a noun into a verb (union -> unionize)
-ed : past tense (unionize -> unionized)

unionized:

ion : root word
-ize : changes a noun into a verb (ion -> ionize)
un- : "not" (ionize -> unionize)
-ed : past tense (unionize -> unionized)

In the second case, notice that the order matters: the un- prefix is applied after -ize, as there isn't a word such as "un-ion".

More on morphemes, or meaningful word elements

In the previous post we discussed morphemes, which are the meaningful parts of a word. An interesting fact about these word elements is that the number of morphemes contained in a word is completely independent of the number of syllables in the word.

Here are some two or more syllable words with just one morpheme:

orange
common
relate
corner
every

The above words are polysyllabic but they cannot be broken down into any more meaningful parts. It can get a bit tricky determining what is and isn't a morpheme, such as the -er in corner not being a suffix.


Here are some one syllable words with more than one morpheme:

caught
went
helped
men
its

The above monosyllabic words contain more than one meaningful element. Some of these form their past tense or plurals irregularly as there is no distinguishable suffix added, even though there is more than one morpheme present.

Examining the number of morphemes in a word

Let's examine the morphemes in the word untruthfully:

morpheme	function
true	root word
-th	changes adjective into noun
-ful	changes noun into adjective
-ly	changes adjective into adverb
un-	'not'

There are a total of 5 morphemes in untruthfully: 1 for the root word, 3 suffixes, and 1 prefix.

In general, the root word is a free morpheme; it can be used on its own. The prefixes and suffixes are usually bound morphemes as they must be attached to the root word. In colloquial speech, there are some cases in which bound morphemes can be used alone (which will be a topic covered in the future).

Words with the greatest number of morphemes in English

Words with 4 - 5 morphemes can be quite common:

uncontrollably: 4 ( root word + 1 prefix + 2 suffixes)
recolonizations: 5 (root word + 1 prefix + 3 suffixes)

Antidisestablishmentarianism, commonly thought of as the longest English word, only has 6 (root word + 2 prefixes + 3 suffixes). Can you find any English words containing more morphemes in just one word? Remember that it is not necessarily just the longest word in terms of total number of letters.

The meaningful elements of a word

The study of word structure and formation is called morphology, and the meaningful parts of a word are known as morphemes. Most of the time in English they are represented by prefixes and/or suffixes. Other languages have infixes (insertion in the middle of a word) and circumfixes (added surrounding a word).

The word toys has two meaningful parts, toy and -s. The -s in this case denotes "plural", modifying the root word toy.
In contrast, the word orange has just one meaningful element (the word orange itself). It would not make sense to break it down further into, say, o + range.

There are 2 kinds of morphemes: free and bound.

Free morphemes can stand alone and have meaning independently.
Bound morphemes must be attached to a free morpheme, they cannot be used by themselves! For instance, you can't just go around saying "-s" to mean "plural".

What is the purpose of morphemes?

Morphemes can derive other words by changing their part of speech. The suffix -ful turns a noun into an adjective. The suffix -ly changes an adjective into an adverb.

Morphemes can also change the meaning of a word, like the prefix un- to mean not. The suffix -ed often represents the past tense when attached to a verb. Obviously, there are exceptions in the case of irregular verbs. The suffix -s can represent either plural when attached to a noun, or denotes third person singular when attached to a verb.

The internet's most hated words?

As mentioned previously, language is always changing and new words are added to a language's vocabulary. However, is there a such thing as adding unnecessary words to a language?

There has been a survey done recently on the most hated words on the internet. Some argue that adding too many of these words will ruin the English language. Here are the top 10 words that made the list:

* Blog
* Blogosphere
* Vlog
* Blook
* Netiquette
* Webinar
* Folksonomy
* Social Networking
* Cookie
* Wiki

Note the large number of blend words (or portmanteau) on the list, it is quite the prevalent method of forming new words.

The word blog itself is an ugly sounding word, with the hard consonants b and g and the unpleasant vowel sound [ɔ]. Blog is pretty much ubiquitous now, the name has stuck, and it's too late to do anything about it. Newspapers are freely using this word without explaining what it is (i.e. it is no longer considered to be technical term).

Blogosphere is a collective term that describes all bloggers. I've heard this term being used by bloggers even though they hate it, simply "'cause there's no other word for it."

Blook seems like a poor choice simply to describe a web-based book. The pronunciation is ambiguous (does it rhyme with look or Luke?) Similarly, a vlog is simply a video blog (why start with the seldom used consonant cluster vl- ?) and there really isn't a need for a special designation.

Netiquette and webinar would be better off using their offline counterparts. Just plain old etiquette and seminar will do, no need for a new word just because it's "online."

Next, folksonomy (a play on taxonomy) is a way of having your site's visitors categorize web based content by themselves. I haven't heard this term used much, by the way. On the other hand, social networking is a term used relatively often to describe myspace-like sites.

Lastly, cookie (in the online sense at least) and wiki may be too technical to be included as new words that would appear in a dictionary.

How languages increase their vocabulary

There are multiple ways that a language can increase its vocabulary, or acquire new words.

1. Derive a word from existing word(s)

This is commonly done by adding prefixes or suffixes to words, or by changing a word's figure of speech.

Example: The prefix cyber-, as in cyberspace.

2. Borrow a word from another language

In the past 100 years, English has accepted words from over 100 languages. English has actually borrowed more words from French during the last century than from any other language. Conversely, the French are not as receptive to borrowing words from English. However, one Americanism, the term OK, is acceptable almost everywhere.

Examples: taco (from Spanish), ciao (from Italian), klutz (from Yiddish)


3. Create an entirely new word

This is quite rare, but in some cases an entirely new word is created which is not based on forming words from another familiar word.

Examples: zap, quark, nerd

Mind your P's and Q's?

What is the origin of the phrase Mind your p's and q's?

1. The letters p and q, with the lowercase letters being a mirror image of each others, were often confused by children learning to write (and also by typesetters).

2. Mind your pints and quarts, as used by bartenders when serving.

3. Mind your please's (P's) and thank you's (the last syllable sounds like Q).

Interesting etymology tidbit: The word peas came from the Latin word pisum, and was adopted into English as pease. Since most nouns take an -s ending for their plural, the s sound was dropped and thus pea became the singular. This is an example of a back-formation.

Types of conversation repairs

In the last post on conversation repairs, we mentioned that there are 4 possible ways to resolve them. Here's an explanation and examples of the 4 kinds of repairs. Keep in mind that conversations that are both self-initiated and self-repaired are the most preferable and least disruptive.

The part of the conversation which initiates the repair will be displayed in red, while the part that resolves the repair will be displayed in blue.

1. Self-initiated and self-repaired

Situations used in:
- correcting yourself
- you can't find the right word, and you find it yourself after a small pause

Example 1:
A: I'm heading off to Sue's-- I mean Mary's house tonight.

Example 2:
A: I need to renew my whatchamacallit-- my prescription today.


2. Other-initiated and self-repaired

Situations used in:
- couldn't hear the speaker clearly
- misunderstanding

Example 3:
A: I'm heading off to vacation next week.
B: What?
A: I said I am going on vacation next week.

Example 4:
Students: We want to [unintelligible speech] the books today!
Teacher: You want to count the books?
Students: No, we want to color the books!


3. Self-initiated and other-repaired

Situations used in:
- you can't find the right word, and someone else fills it in for you

Example 5:
A: I need more storage space on my computer, so I need to get a new umm....
B: A hard drive?
A: Yeah, that's right, a hard drive.


4. Other-initiated and other-repaired

Situations used in:
- you have your facts incorrect and someone else corrected you

Example 6:
A: With the 6% sales tax, that would add quite a bit to the price.
B: The sales tax is actually 7%. *

Example 7:
A: Aren't you glad that today is payday?
B: Payday is actually tomorrow. *

* indicates that the repair has been both initiated and resolved in the same sentence.

Conversation Repairs

When we have to correct ourselves (or others) while speaking, we make a conversation repair.

Repairs can be initiated and resolved by the speakers themselves or another conversationalist. This makes 4 different kinds of conversation repairs, listed from most to least polite:

1. self-initiated and self-repaired
2. other-initiated and self-repaired
3. self-initiated and other-repaired
4. other-initiated and other-repaired

It's pretty obvious that repairs that are initiated and repaired by oneself are more polite than those that are repaired by others. This is because there is an unspoken rule that speakers be given a chance to say what they want to say by themselves.

Conversation repairs happen for a variety of reasons: when we (or someone else) can't find the right word, when we can't hear a speaker clearly, or when we misinterpret an utterance.

The next post will provide examples of the different kinds of converation repairs mentioned above.

Hesitation Particles, hmm...

What is a hesitation particle?

Sometimes known as filled pauses, they often precede a dispreferred response in a conversation. Instead of refusing or declining an offer right away, one usually throws in a filler word and/or a small pause (could be 0.5 seconds or more).

Hesitation particles are common in everyday speech, but often times speakers are not aware that they are using these words themselves.

Be careful of overusing them, as too many hesitation particles can make one sound less powerful or less credible. This is especially true when one is doing a presentation or public speech to a large audience. In normal conversations, these usually cannot be avoided completely and we have gotten accustomed using them often.

Here's a list of hesitation particles in English:
hmmm
oh
eh
uhm
um
er
ah
mmm

Here's a list of filler words to go along with them:
kinda
sorta
like
y'know
perhaps
so
actually
maybe

Preferred responses

There are 2 kinds of possible responses to speech acts: preferred and dispreferred.

Preferred responses are those that are culturally expected, they are the ones that feel the most 'natural'.

Characteristics of preferred responses:
-delivered promptly
-brief and to the point

Example:
A: Want to join us for dinner tomorrow?
B: We'd love to!

Dispreferred responses are those that are not expected, but they are not necessarily rude if phrased properly.

Characteristics of dispreferred responses:
-delayed response
-hesitation particles used
-long-winded explanation

Example (rude):
A: Want to join us for dinner tomorrow?
B: No, your cooking is terrible.

Example (polite):
A: Want to join us for dinner tomorrow?
B: [pause] Well, hmmm... I told Cathy a while ago that I would join her tomorrow for dinner. Maybe some other time, okay?

Since some think that *any* kind of dispreferred response may give off a sense of rudeness, one may try to mask a dispreferred response by lying.

A: So, what did you think of the movie?
B: It was great! [You actually thought it was the worst film you have seen.]