PHONETICS: AN INDISPENSABLE COMPONENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE (Pages 199 -208) by Dr. Sarita Jain in THE ENGLISH RESEARCH EXPRESS / ISSN:2321-1164 (Online); 2347-2642 (Print)

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics which deals with the study of the sounds. It also deals with the production, transmission and reception of the sounds of human speech. Phonetics was studied as early as 2000 years ago in ancient India. Since Indians have variety of local languages and dialects, teaching phonetics to them is somewhat tough. We know that all languages are spoken first and written second. If we speak in English with our local people, however the pronunciation is, it is not observable but whenever we want to communicate with others means especially foreigners, the speaker must articulate in standard pronunciation. Regarding this, P. Tench says that "Pronunciation is not an optional extra for the language learner, any more than grammar, vocabulary or any other aspect of language is. If the learner's general aim is to talk intelligibly to others in another language, a reasonable pronunciation is important." The learners who do not have proper wisdom in pronunciation may be weak in other skills also. If the speaker is sure that his accent is understandable, there is no problem. In order to achieve these goals, there is no doubt, the people will need to contemplate about pronunciation and spend some time on it. It is necessary to incorporate phonetics from school studies so that the learners may habituate to articulate words in a correct way. Pronunciation materials should be added in the classroom activities. The English language has twenty vowel phonemes and twenty four consonant phonemes. The treatment of the segmental basically includes sound contrast in words, pronunciation of vowel and consonant phonemes. Phonetic transcription is necessary to learn pronunciation. The teachers should teach in RP English to make the learners learn and articulate the correct pronunciation. There are many procedures to learn phonetics - (a) Read aloud (b) Provide the conversational activities (c) Practice through the Dictionary (d) Use and repeat the sounds (e) CALL (f) Self Study It is a compulsory constituent in speaking a second language. Keywords: modern linguistics, standard pronunciation, near pronunciation, elements of expression, articulation, vernacular sounds etc.