Dan Matthew A.

Hizon 2nd of July,

2023

ENL 102

Phonetics and Phonology in Second Language Acquisition

Language is composed of units and the most basic is phonetics,

however, this not mean it is not important but in fact it is the
fundamental unit that affect the whole language. All words, sentence
or phrases in all language can have the same meaning but they surely
have a different phonetics. On the other hand phonology examine how
we will pronounce these different phonetics, so that it will help us to
be able to produce sounds on every language regardless of its
phonetics. But how will these two will affect people on acquiring
language especially second language?

In terms of second language acquisition, people often associate

foreign language to their first or native language by seeking for its
similarities, for example a lot of Filipinos are aware that some
commonly used words in Filipino language are closely related to
Spanish as they are colonized by Spain before, like “Lamesa”, a word
means “table” we use almost every day which is actually a merge two
words “La Mesa” in Spanish language and a “the table” in English
language. And there’s a lot of word like that,

When it comes to pronunciation, lot of people tend to mimics how

the foreigner speak it without even knowing any words from that
language, like how the famous humorous song in Philippines titled
“Abuchike” by Yoyoy Villame, the song whole lyrics is just a made-up
words that sound like a Chinese words, this indicate that with only just
the sound of it, people can somehow identify what language people
are speaking.

Some people struggle to pronounce some words in different

language, it because some language have a phonological system that
maybe different to others, for example the rhotic sound. Some non-
rhotic speaker struggle to pronounce rhotic word as they’re not using
it on their native language like British people.

So if they are thinking to learn language that are heavily rhotic

like Spanish or Italian, they will surely will struggle to that. first

language can also influence speaker upon learning second language

because sometimes they are confused by it, for example when words
does not exist in their first language, an example to this is feminine
and masculine pronoun that is not used in other language like in

countries like Philippines.

To sum all of the thoughts of people towards language, they tend

to have a perception when they hear any sound in the language, some
make fun to it, some are scared to it, some find it offensive and some
find relaxing whenever they hear it. So what we can do as a people
that is much aware of these differences is to accept and embrace it in
order to make communication more inclusive whether they have a
thick rhotic accent or non-rhotic accent, and lastly we should be
mindful on every sound we produce cause remember, phonetics can
alter everything.