Phonetics_and_Phonology 🖋️ Transcription in English

#Phonetics_and_Phonology
             🖋️ Transcription in English 🖋️
Transcription is the use of the Phonetic symbols to represent the sounds of words.

We have two types of transcription:
1- Phonemic transcription: every speech sound is identified as one of the phonemes and written with the appropriate symbol. Phonemes are enclosed in slashes / /, e.g. "pen" /pen/

2- Phonetic transcription (allophonic): it is more accurate in phonetic detail and contains much more information than phonemic transcription. We use allophones and enclose them in square brackets, e.g. "pen" [ph n]

"pen" /pen/ — Phonemic transcription
"pen" [ph n] — Phonetic transcription

        🖋️ Aspiration in English: […..h] 🖋️
Aspiration is a moment of release until the vocal folds start to vibrate for the following vowel and it can be characterized as a puff of air that appears after the voiceless plosives.

[b, d, g] are all voiced plosives, while [p, t, k] are all voiceless plosives.

Aspiration is symbolized as (h) after the voiceless plosive sound, e.g.  
Pan = /pæn/    — Phonemic transcription
        = [phæn]   — Phonetic transcription

The rule for the aspiration:
Whenever [p, t, k] occur in the beginning of the syllable or in the stressed syllable, they will be aspirated.

Let us study the following situations:
-In /pan, tan, can/ we have a voiceless consonant followed directly with a vowel.
- We all know that all vowels are oral and voiced. Therefore, when we produce [p, t, k] there is a movement from voiceless consonant to a voiced vowel.
-When we move from /p/ to /a/ there is a little stream or a puff of air goes directly after producing /p/ sound. This sound is /h/ sound and we call this situation as "aspiration".

NOTE!
- If voiceless plosives are preceded by /s/, so there is no aspiration.
S +voiceless plosives + a vowel = No aspiration, e.g. "spell" /spel/, [spel]