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Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of the beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words.The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by J. R. R. Tolkien, [1] during the mid-20th century and derives from Ancient Greek φωνή (phōnḗ) 'voice, sound' and αἰσθητική (aisthētikḗ) 'aesthetics'.
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
For example, you may pronounce cot and caught, do and dew, or marry and merry the same. This often happens because of dialect variation (see our articles English phonology and International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects). If this is the case, you will pronounce those symbols the same for other words as well. [1]
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association.
Phonemic notation commonly uses IPA symbols that are rather close to the default pronunciation of a phoneme, but for legibility often uses simple and 'familiar' letters rather than precise notation, for example /r/ and /o/ for the English [ɹʷ] and [əʊ̯] sounds, or /c, ɟ/ for [t͜ʃ, d͜ʒ] as mentioned above.
The defining particular pronunciations of particular words that have more than an 86% likelihood of occurring in a particular cluster are: pajamas with either the phoneme /æ/ or the phoneme /ɑ/; coupon with either /ju/ or /u/; Monday with either /eɪ/ or /i/; Florida with either /ɔ/ or other possibilities (such as /ɑ/); caramel with either ...
As an example, the vowel spelled a corresponds to two Middle English pronunciations: /a/ in most circumstances, but long /aː/ in an open syllable, i.e. followed by a single consonant and then a vowel, notated aCV in the spelling column. (This discussion ignores the effect of trisyllabic laxing.)
The change of [ɪ] to [j] in these positions (as described above) produced some clusters which would have been difficult or impossible to pronounce, which led to what John Wells calls "early yod dropping" in which the [j] was elided in the following environments: [5] After /ʃ, tʃ, dʒ/, for example chute /ʃuːt/, chew /tʃuː/, juice /dʒuːs/