Yule chapter 5

Phonology is the study of how sound are used in a language. Phonology itself is just one part of the language. It is amazing to know that people do not used certain sounds such as the nasilation (46). I was impressed to read that phonemes are considered as phonetic of the mind. I have never heard such thing before, I know that people can have thoughts, but not phonemes.
In my dialect there are some sounds that can be understand only by Mande people. Even if we are from the same country, it does not mean that you can automatically pronounce those sounds correctly. There are some sounds that you have to be taught how to pronounce it before you hit the right note.
By changing only one letter in a word, you systematically change the meaning of it. For instance, pat and fat, bell and bet.(50) This classification is called minimal pairs. The words have different meaning and differ from only one sound.
I wonder how sounds are memorized by people?

my name in IPA

kadiatou= /kaediaetu/

k=voiceless,velar,stops
ae=front, low
d=voice, alveolar, stops
i=front, high
ae=front, low
t=voiceless,alveolar, stops
u=back, high

People most of the mispronounce my name. Based on my expereience English speaker have tendency to pronounce my name as /kedIaetU/. My name is borrowed from the arabic name Khadija and all arabic speaker do not have nay problem saying it. It is a matter of the place where the sound of my name comes from. With practice most often people get it right.
It is difficult for me to say the "h" sound in at the beginning of any English word such as house, home, horse ... It is hard for me to pronounce the "h" sound because of my French background.Even though the "h" exist in the french alphabet, it is not pronounce at all, it is omitted. Now that I know where that the "h" sound is voiceless, glottal, glides; I hope to practice the pronunciation until I get it correct.

AMY TAN

In the story "YES and NO", Amy Tan seems to think that people have tendency to criticize a language because they do not come from that culture. Tan completly disagree with the fact that people think that there is no such thing as "yes" and "no" in chinese. She writes, "Why do peoople keep saying these things? As if we truly were those little dolls sold in Chinatown tourist shop, heads bobbing up and down in complacement agreement to anything said!"(26 Tan). She is saying that American people think that they can say whatever they wanted about Chinese language, and get away with it, without any other chinese person riposting it, as if they were popette. Nobody has mastered his/her own language, so how can American people try to correct or add some vocabulary words to the Chinese language.People do not understand the chinese language. The fact that some of the wods in chinese are translated in English does not mean that every single chinese word can be represented in English.
Tan also point it out the difference between the Chinese and the American cultures. In the Chinese culture is respectful to beg someone to accept a gift or a food that you are offering to them. However in the American culture, people just ask once and than that's it. Tan writes,"Ai!"exclaimed my mother, completly exasperated."Nobody else wants it. if you don't take it, it will only rot!"(25). Her mother spent an amount of time begging her aunt to take the food, because in the Chinese culture it is a sign of respect.
People should be open minded about langauges. If you try to understand a language and the meaning of it, it will be easy to communicate with each other without judging. Chinese people themselves agree that they have a complicated language, but if they are able to learn other languages, why wont we?

Language and me

Language is a tool used by people to communicate their feelings to the outside world and also to understand what others. It can be either a verbal or non-verbal (Sign) language. The importance is that you are able to express yourself. Language can sometime be a barrier between you and people, but you have to be able to communicate or learn the way to make yourself understand. Sometimes I asked myself, why there is no such thing in the world as a universal language to help people that travel around the world to communicate on?
Coming to New York City was like a dream comes true for me and my siblings. However we did not realize that there will be a slide problem with it, “Language”. I am from a French speaking country, therefore all my life I have been exposed to the French language, and not that it is an easy language compared English , but it was natural for me to express myself on it. In New York City, I had to learn English at baby steps, because I did not know any. I got lost a couple of time in the subways stations, because I was unable to read the instructions written in English and also because I did not know how to ask people for direction. So I realized that no matter what I do in New York City in order for me to survive I had to learn English.
The English language helped me to understand most of the books written by Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” or “Hamlet” or “Othello”. It is not like I did not get them the first time I read it in French but because some words in English do not have the same meaning once there are translated in a different language. The power of language over a human being is so powerful that if you do not perceive what the author or the over person id talking about it will be difficult for you to connect with the book or the ideas that you are facing.
Language is such a fascinating topic that I always asks myself, how do people come up with the creation of language, or how do languages die? Another interesting aspect of language is that children seemed to distinguish the difference between languages even though they have not been thought by their parents. Sometime people forget about their natives languages, by moving to a new environment and not being among their community. For example, the new generation of Spanish people not being able to speak Spanish. How do people forget about their language?