ABSTRACT
When learning to pronounce a new language, it’s essential to get the priorities right. The most important sounds are the ones that can change the meaning of words. Some sound differences matter a great deal, whereas others are of little significance. The ones that matter most are those that can change the meaning of otherwise identical words. Not every sound difference can change the meaning of a word. Unfortunately for the learner, languages generally don’t have the same phoneme system, and they certainly don’t have the same range of allophones. So the learner has to work out the phonemic inventory of the new language and all the phonetic variants. Words consist of more than a set of segments (vowels and consonants) arranged in a certain order. Words of more than one syllable also have a distinctive rhythmic pattern depending on which syllables are pronounced with stress and which are not.
