Phonetic transcriptions illustrate that there are various pronunciation in various accents of English. It is important to note that despite the word being spelled out the same, the fact remains that its pronunciation dictates the region or the culture that any English speaker hails from. The basic spelling of a word cannot be used to explain how a word should be pronounced. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a special system that is used in conducting transcription of an English word in different accents. A good example of a phonetic transcription is the word no. According to the IPA phonetic transcription of the word would be /noʊ/. This is a clear indication that the IPA phonetic transcription stresses the phonetic arrangement in a given English word.
One of the most important things to note in the IPA phonetic transcription is the idea that different words might have the same consonants and vowels but are not pronounced in the same way. For example the word no and the word do share a common vowel o. However, these two words are different in their pronunciations. The word no would be pronounced / noʊ/ while the word do would be pronounced as /du: / according to the IPA transcription system. The difference in the pronunciation of these words in according to the IPA transcription system illustrates that there are differences in vowel stress in these words. However, the level of word stress across different accents of English varies often resulting in the difference in pronunciations across these accents.
In order to best understand word stress as a fundamental determinant in the phonetic pronunciations across different accents, it is important to look at how different syllables in different words are stressed across different cultures. In this case, it is important to compare the different in word stress between British and American English. A good example of difference in word transcription between British and American English is the word become. In American English, the word become would be produced as /bɪˈkʌm/. On the contrary the word become transcription is /bɪ 'keɪm/. This shows that the pronunciation of the first two syllables ‘be’ in the word become is the same both in British and American English. However, the difference in pronunciations is different for the last syllables ‘come.’ In the American accent the last syllables in the word become is /ˈkʌm/ while in British English /'keɪm/.
This illustrates the difference in the stress of the last syllables of the word become. It is worth noting that the difference in the word pronouncing shows that there is a difference in the strength of the stress used in the pronunciations of words in both American and British English. As an illustration of the different word stress that is employed in both British and American English, it is important to look at other words that have different strengths of stress in their pronunciations in both British and American English. For example, the word pen has a different stress in both American English and British English. In the American English, the transcription of the word pen according to the IPA transcription system would be /ˈpen/. This is contrary to the British English where the emphasis in word stress is on the last word /pen/ (-nn-). This shows that the stress of the word ‘pen ‘in British English has more emphasis on the last syllable ‘n.’ It is from these clear that there are different emphasis on words across different accents of the English.
Using this as a basis for a transcription exercise, it is important to look at the phonetic transcriptions in other English accent. The root sentence in this case is “"Bother, father caught hot coffee in the car park." In this exercise, we are going to transcript the word in 5 English accents. The first one is General Australian language. In the Australian General English the sentence would be /bA"Dar, fA"Dar kA"t hA"t kA"fi In Da kA"r pA"rk/. As is evident in this transcription, there are world stresses in this sentence. In this sentence the word bother has a stress on last four syllables of the word bother. ‘ther’ in this case is stressed to become "D@r According to this transcription, it is evident that there is more emphasis on the transcription of the letter ‘A’. This is evident in the words father, car, and park.
Going onto the second English accent, Canadian English, the sentence “Bother, father caught hot coffee in the car park’ would be transcribed as; bɑðər, fɑðər kɑt hɑt kɑfi ɪn ðə kɑr pɑrk. In this word transcription, it is evident that the place of stress in the pronunciation is different to that of the general Australian language. In this case, the syllable‘t’ seems to have more emphasis. It is evident that in pronunciation of the words bother and father. In both cases the last four syllables “ther” are pronounced as /ðər/ (Jones 23). This illustrates the fact that different accents in the English language have different tonal stress in their pronunciation. It is worth noting that the different stress areas emanates from the fact that mother tongue pronunciations and phonetics are brought into the English language.
In continuation of this exercise it is important to look at the transcription in the Irish language. The transcription of the sentence ‘Bother, father caught hot coffee in the car park’ would be /bADa’r/, /fADar/ kAt/ hAt/ kAfi/ In/ Da/ KAr/ Park/ (Lortie 47). In this case, the emphasis on the syllable A is different within different words. For example, the letter ‘a’ in the word ‘father’ is not the same as that of the word ‘park’. This illustrates that the strength of the word stress on the sentence varies from word to word. Finally it is important to look at the word transcription in the United States. The transcription of this word in American English would be /bɑ’dər/, /fɑ’dər/ kɑt /hɑt/ kɑfi/ ɪn/ ‘də/ kɑr/ pɑrk/ (Gimson 34). In the American English accent there is more emphasis on the syllable ‘t.’ this different from other transcriptions from other English accents.
Works Cited
AUE: The Audio Archive. (2013). AUE: The alt.usage.english Home Page. Retrieved May 13, 2013, from http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml
Gimson, A. C. Everyman's English pronouncing dictionary, containing over 58,000 words in international phonetic transcription. 13th ed. London: Dent; 1967. Print.
Jones, Daniel. An English pronouncing dictionary: (Showing the pronunciations of over 50,000 words in international phonetic transcription. Rev. ed. London: Dent, 1932. Print.
Jones, Daniel. Everyman's English pronunciation dictionary: containing over 59,000 words in international phonetic transcription. 14th ed. London: Dent, 19821977. Print.
Lortie, Paul. Study of an Irish-Canadian pronunciation: a phonetic study. --. Montreal: Universite de Montreal, 1948. Print.
