Response to "The sound patterns of language"

Chapter 5 in The Study of Language by George Yule was about how sounds change when we speak and which sounds are allowed to follow each other in any given language (phonotactics). Since no one talks like robots and articulates every single sound in a word, this chapter is a more accurate description of spoken language. Topics covered included phones and allophones and minimal pairs and sets. Allophones are varieties of a single sound or phoneme which only affect the pronunciation of a word and not its meaning whereas minimal pairs are words that are almost the same except that they have different phonemes occurring in the same position. The chapter also talks about syllables and consonant clusters and my favorites: assimilation and elision (p48-49).

I tend to speak really fast sometimes and depending with whom I am speaking I'll leave out certain letters without realizing it(elision) and slur certain sounds together (assimilation). When in school or in a new place, I'll be more conscious of the way I speak and I try to articulate my words more. But when I'm around friends and family I take a more laid-back tone and my pronunciation changes. A good example for elision would be how words that end in "ing" tend to lose the g and for assimilation the pronunciation of you and me (p49).