English pronunciation

The former text talks about our brain learning inside, and this text will talk about learning the outside language English. English language is an imitation of life features. It includes sounds and marks while it starts from sounds. Generally all languages employ sounds that can be easily pronounced by human and then add some hard pronounced sounds differently. Therefore we discuss what sounds can be easily pronounced by human and what other sounds are added into English.

The nature of sound is vibration. We human pronounce by vibrating the air in our mouth or nose, and other animals living in water or earth may vibrate water or earth. What vibrate the air? They are cord, tongue, palate, teeth and lips. Then let’s count how they vibrate and how many different sounds that can be easily pronounced. These tissues vibrate air in two ways: one strength vibration and changing strength vibration. Our vocal cavities are simple and small; there is no need to complicate them. Let’s see the diagrams of vibrators:

Cord nose mouth

Cord tongue lips

+ relax Lip-teeth _ up wide

Back mid-wide Palate small-wide teeth round

Mid-round Small-round

These are the two main paths of air and the variations in mouth. If you want, you can use more effort to produce some other sounds, but they are not the easy sounds. There is only one sound passing cord and nose; the cord must vibrate as nose itself cannot vibrate. Don’t think about sneeze, and we don’t think about pronounce during breathing in air. They are not easy sounds. The one sound from nose can be subdivided, if the traits of strength and length are involved. From the other path, the air passes cord and goes into the mouth. In mouth the tongue, teeth and lips can vibrate air. The cord is given two choices: vibrate or not; there is different strength for cords and we regard it as a subdividing factor and don’t think about it here. The tongue can relax or move up, back and against the palate; they are the easiest acts and other acts like up back, right, left or so on need more effort to make, so I don’t include them. The lips can touch the teeth, can open wide or round and can be large, middle, and small in size. Next let’s count them one by one to see how many combinations can produce sounds.

Cord+ nasal /m/ /n/ / ŋ/

Cord-: mouth

1. tongue relax /h/ 2. tongue up /s/

3. tongue back /k/ /ʃ/ 4. Tongue palate /t/ 5. tongue teeth /θ/ 6. tongue lip=lips 7. lip teeth /f/ 8. lips /p/ Cord+ mouth

9. tongue relax=lip changes

10. tongue up /z/ /l/dark /r/ 11. tongue back /g/ /ʒ/ 12. Tongue palate /l/clear /d/ 13. tongue teeth /ð/

14. tongue lip=lips /b/ 15. lip teeth /v/

16. lips wide /æ/ 17. lips mid-wide /ə:/ /ə/ /e/ 18. lips small-wide /i:/ /i/ /j/ 19. lips round /a:/ /ʌ/ 20. lips mid-round /ɔ:/ /ɔ/

21. lips small-round /u:/ /u/ /w/

In the above, all the easy acts are listed. We can see what English sounds they correspond. Some of the sounds are pronounced by vibrating the air in one strength and some are in strength from strong to weak. Among them, I dislike the sound /æ/. It needs big strength in cord and big strength in mouth, so it’s tried to pronounce it. I hope one day it can be deleted. Our nose and mouth are small and few acts can our tongue and lips do, so we just pair them into these few couples.

Gravity takes the form of air vibration and reproduces sounds. However, we cannot utilize these sounds to produce unsteady structures which can represent steady structures. We can’t record sounds and that means we can’t pass the same sounds too complex. Our hearing, speaking and memory abilities only support us to unify few distinctive sounds and can’t discriminate similar and long sounds for us. Therefore human use ink language to unify meanings, give each mark a sound and the sounds are unified accordingly. Pure sounds can only represent 2 of the 6 life features and other development of pronunciation will be discussed under marks.

英语发音

前一章讲了向内认知，这一章我们将向外学习语言英语。英语是对生命特征的模仿，它包含声音与符号且始于声音。通常语言会采用易发出的声音，但也会包含一些各自的难发声音。因此我们讨论哪些声音是容易发出的，英语又加了哪些难发的声音。

声音的本质是振动，人类通过振动口腔或鼻腔的空气发声，而住在水里或土里的生物则振动水和土发声。是什么振动了空气？它们包括声带、舌头、牙龈、牙齿和嘴唇。它们如何振动，一共有哪些不同振动？振动方式有两种：同频振动和变频振动，而声音数量由振动物决定，让我们列出可能改变震动的动作，再一一说明其声音。

鼻腔 声带 口腔

声带 舌头 嘴唇 + 放松 靠齿 - 抬起 咧开 后缩 中咧 牙龈 小咧 大圆 中圆 小圆

以上就是声音的两条路与不同的振动动作。这里考虑的都是容易做出的动作，如果你费劲的话也能做出其它动作。通过鼻子的声音只有一种，鼻子不能振动只能声带振动。这里不考虑擤鼻子或者吸气发声等费劲动作。振动强度和持续时间可以再次改变声音，那是再次改变，和振动动作无关。在口腔这条路上，声带可选择振动或不震动，舌头可以放松不动、上抬、后缩、靠牙龈、靠牙齿，嘴唇可以靠牙齿、变宽或变圆、变成大中小尺寸。下面我们把这些动作列出来，再找找看英语用了哪些。

声带+ 鼻腔

/m/ /n/ / ŋ/

声带- 口腔

1.舌头放松 /h/ 2.舌头上抬 /s/

3.舌头后缩 /k/ /ʃ/ 4.舌头靠牙龈 /t/ 5.舌头靠牙齿 /θ/ 6.舌头靠嘴唇=唇靠唇

7.唇靠齿 /f/ 8.唇靠唇 /p/ 声带+ 口腔

9.舌头放松=看唇形

10.舌头上抬 /z/ /l/dark /r/ 11.舌头后缩 /g/ /ʒ/ 12.舌头靠牙龈 /l/clear /d/ 13.舌头靠牙齿 /ð/ 14.舌头靠嘴唇=唇靠唇 /b/ 15.唇靠齿 /v/ 16.唇咧开 /æ/

17.唇中咧 /ə:/ /ə/ /e/ 18.唇小咧 /i:/ /i/ /j/ 19.唇大圆 /a:/ /ʌ/ 20.唇中圆 /ɔ:/ /ɔ/

21.唇小圆 /u:/ /u/ /w/

以上就是容易发声的动作以及对应的英语声音。一个动作能发好几个音是因为力量、时间上的不同。力量包括同频和变频，变频主要是由高到低，也就是力量从大变小，其它像就好了。我不喜欢/æ/，嘴巴用力声带也用力，费劲希望删掉。嘴巴鼻子不大，能动的东西不多，动作也没几个，不用说得很复杂。

声音能代表的生命特征就是引力和再生产，不能继续代表。原因还是那句话，声音古代无法保存，我们的嘴巴，耳朵，大脑只能支持我们统一使用几个差异明显的声音，再多就不好发，听不出，记不住。所以人类发明符号来统一意义和声音，接下来的声音发展将附在符号上一起讲。