Question - Vowels and consonants

[Guest]

English--the "mutt" language

I can't claim to be an authority when it comes to the English language, but I can tell you some of what I learned in Portuguese and what I can deduce from there.

The reason why one can question the classification of letters into vowels and consonants is because the 26 letters on the English alphabet don't correspond to the phonemes used by the English language. This is also true for Portuguese (23 letters and a gazillion different phonemes), but not for Japanese, Finnish, Arabic, Italian and Spanish, for example.

These phonemes, nothing more than sounds, can be separated into vowels and consonants.

A sound will be a vowel if the air reaches the outside freely without finding considerable obstacles on its way. It can be an oral vowel, or a nasal vowel, depending on whether or not the air passage to the nose cavity is blocked. Does this mean nasal vowels could be considered, in extreme cases, consonantes? Is there a precise definition of 'considerable obstacle', or does it depend on each individual person and case?

A sound will be a consonant if the air, before reaching the outside, finds its passage total- or almost totally obstructed. [there are many variables to classify the consonants, and I don't know if there's a point into trying to translate all these names into English]

But the point is, if you think about it, you'll often find words written in English whose characters don't exactly correspond to the phonetic interpretation you're accustomed to make of them. This is obviously a flaw of the written language that has swerved from the principles that guided it, once. Maybe the way one word is pronounced changed with time and the written language failed to keep up with it; maybe this word's graphic representation was adopted from a language where it did make phonetic sense, but it's pronounciation was anglicized...

I think you're on to something here. I don't know for certain, but since the English that we are familiar with today comes from a mixing of languages and has been influenced by many more, it wouldn't be surprising that both spelling and pronunciation have changed considerably (that, and the factor of time and language "evolution" itself). But I'm still interested in why it is that linguists, for example, want to make a separation between certain sounds ("vowels" and "consonants"). My question would be: what is the purpose for making such a distinction? And why is that distinction taught to children? Cognitively, what does this distinction do in terms of how we (people who firmly believe that there are vowels and consonants, and that they are somehow different and important) think about language?

--Xtaabay

 

[Rybka]

See! I told you it was a serious question.

Regards,                                 Rybka