In phonology, an allophone is one of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive and the aspirated form are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, and are allophones for the phoneme, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English.
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol ⟨ə⟩, placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it usually represents the mid central vowel sound, produced when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, such as the vowel sound of the ⟨a⟩ in the English word about.
Yue is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.
Non-native pronunciations of English result from the common linguistic phenomenon in which non-native speakers of any language tend to transfer the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules of their first language into their English speech. They may also create innovative pronunciations not found in the speaker's native language.
The phonology of Standard German is the standard pronunciation or accent of the German language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof as well as the geographical variants and the influence of German dialects.
Tinglish refers to any form of English mixed with or heavily influenced by Thai. It is typically produced by native Thai speakers due to language interference from the first language. Differences from standard native English occur in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. The term was coined in 1970, and several alternative terms have been proposed since its inception, such as Thainglish (1973), Thaiglish (1992), Tinglish (1994), Thinglish (1976), Thenglish (2003), and Tenglish (2012).
Macanese patois, known as patuá to its speakers, is a Portuguese-based creole language with a substrate from Cantonese, Malay and Sinhala, which was originally spoken by the Macanese community of the Portuguese colony of Macau. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora.
The phonology of Portuguese varies among dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in intelligibility. Portuguese is a pluricentric language and has some of the most diverse sound variations of any language. This article on phonology focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language—and differences between European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and Angolan Portuguese (AP) can be considerable—varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress). Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel (schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced". Various phonological analyses exist for these phenomena.
The phonology of Italian describes the sound system—the phonology and phonetics—of Standard Italian and its geographical variants.
Wong Shik Ling published a scheme of phonetic symbols for Cantonese based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the book A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton. The scheme has been widely used in Chinese dictionaries published in Hong Kong. The scheme, known as S. L. Wong system (黃錫凌式), is a broad phonemic transcription system based on IPA and its analysis of Cantonese phonemes is grounded in the theories of Y. R. Chao.
Eastern Pomo, also known as Clear Lake Pomo, is a nearly extinct Pomoan language spoken around Clear Lake in Lake County, California by one of the Pomo peoples.
The phonology of Quebec French is more complex than that of Parisian or Continental French. Quebec French has maintained phonemic distinctions between and, and, and, and. The latter phoneme of each pair has disappeared in Parisian French, and only the last distinction has been maintained in Meridional French, yet all of these distinctions persist in Swiss and Belgian French.
The traditional English pronunciation of Latin, and Classical Greek words borrowed through Latin, is the way the Latin language was traditionally pronounced by speakers of English until the early 20th century.
The phonology of Standard Chinese has historically derived from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Actual pronunciation varies widely among speakers, as they introduce elements of their native varieties. Elements of the sound system include not only the segments—e.g. vowels and consonants—of the language, but also the tones applied to each syllable. In addition to its four main tones, Standard Chinese possesses a neutral tone, used on weak syllables.
Standard Cantonese pronunciation is that of Guangzhou, also known as Canton, capital of Guangdong Province. Hong Kong Cantonese is related to Guangzhou dialect, and they diverge only slightly. Yue dialects in other parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces like Taishanese, may be considered divergent to a greater degree.
This article discusses the phonological system of standard Russian based on the Moscow dialect. For an overview of dialects in the Russian language, see Russian dialects. Most descriptions of Russian describe it as having five vowel phonemes, though there is some dispute over whether a sixth vowel,, is separate from. Russian has 34 consonants, which can be divided into two types:
This article explains the phonology of Malay and Indonesian based on the pronunciation of Standard Malay, which is the official language of Brunei, Singapore and Malaysia, and Indonesian, which is the official language of Indonesia and a working language in Timor Leste. There are two main standards for Malay pronunciation, the Johor-Riau standard, used in Brunei and Malaysia, and the Baku, used in Indonesia and Singapore.
