Phonetics: How to Design with Phonetics in Mind

Abstract

Language has been present for thousands of years. It has evolved (and continues to evolve) throughout civilizations and today it is an integral part by which culture, religion, and an individual’s nationality are described. Regardless of culture, religion, or nationality, communication begins at birth. During this time, babies have the ability to discriminate sounds of adults by keeping statistics on the languages spoken at home. As babies continue to develop toward age of 1, they become better at discriminating their native sounds, but lose the ability to discriminate other language sounds. This junction is referred to as the “critical phonetic period.” Prior to this phonetic period, babies are able to keep statistics of other languages. Babies cry to signal fear, hunger, or sensory overload. Several months after birth continued brain development allows pronunciation of sounds like “da-da” and “ba-ba.” As development continues, pronunciation of early words begins such as “mama” and “dada.” These are the developments through which phonetics plays a role in the development of language. It is one of the observations that during early childhood children learn to pay much attention to the mouths of their respective parents. This helps the child to learn to put sounds together to form a word. For this discussion, we will only focus the subject of phonetics to the English language.

“The greatest teacher failure is…we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters”

Yoda, Star Wars Episode 8