Application Questions

#5 The phoneme that I chose is /c/. As we examine the phonemes, we get a much better understanding of the way in which the tongue positioning is assimilated to produce other sounds. The first word is cards. The tongue placement remains stable and the /c/ is not assimilated. The second word is clasp. The tongue placement is assimilated between the teeth to make the /l/ sound. The next word is church and the placement of the tongue is assimilated to the top of the mouth in order to blend the /c/ and /h/. The last word I chose to look at was crumble. The tongue placement is assimilated to the back of the mouth to make the /r/ sound. “The allophones of a phoneme are all perceived as the same sound despite the physical differences in their production.” (Freeman, 2004, 88) This holds true with every word except for church.    

#6 I have a friend who lives in Western Pennsylvania and when I first met him, there were some words that he used that were difficult to understand. I remember the first time he said crayon. It sounded like he said crown. I had no idea what he was talking about until he said “You know red, yellow, green, etc.” He would speak very fast and say things like “lookoverthere.” He blends the words he uses and it was hard to comprehend at times. His vocabulary was very different from mine. He would call soda, pop and sprinkles were called jimmies. There were a lot of different variations between my vocabulary and his. The syntax of the words he used was sometimes out of order. A good example of this is when he would say “Ready to go, are you?” Instead of are you ready to go. I know that he might have meant to indicate that he was ready, are you. However, I had never heard the sentence structure spoken that way. In a college environment I felt my friend was very comfortable with the dialect he spoke. I did take a class with him at one point in our college career and I could tell that he tried to control his dialect when talking to a professor or in front of the class. He liked where he was from and never had a problem with the people he spoke to.

I feel that dialect reduction is both good and bad. I feel that it is good for someone to learn the standard dialect in order to present themselves in a clear and respectful manner. I always remembered my mother saying “You only have one chance to make a good first impression.” However, I strongly believe that people should not forget where they come from. We live in the greatest country in the world with many different people. Our different dialects reflect who we are.