Discovering the Phonemes

Phonemes are the distinctive sounds of a spoken language. They are the basis for making an alphabet, a set of letters, each of which represents one phoneme.

Assigned to the Mixtec language of Mexico, Ken and Evelyn Pike, SIL linguists, had a problem. Ken angered a Mixtec man when he mistakenly told him he would pay een (one) peso instead of eèn (nine) pesos. The only difference between the two words was their tone. This was a tonal language, they deduced, like Chinese. Tones were as meaningful as vowels.

But linguistic science was in its infancy and no one could tell him how to figure how many tones there were.

Pike found the clue in the words of the eminent linguist Edward Sapir: "Tones should be compared in context, not in isolation."

Pike searched and prayed for a method that would help others as well. He set up a tone frame, a way of comparing tones of a list of words within an unchanging context. Note the example for the word cú (it is):

This frame helped identify the three tonemes (tone phonemes) of Mixtec: high, mid, and low.

Using this method Pike developed a system of tone analysis which he and his linguist colleagues around the world could use.

Hearing Phonemes Through Their Ears

Working among the Rotokas people of Papua New Guinea, SIL linguist Skip Firchow had written down the following words: lagai, nagai, dagai, and ragai. But on reading them back, the people said they could not hear any difference. To them l, n, d, and r all sounded alike.

It's the same as when English speakers hear no difference between the l's of milk and lettuce, though speakers of some other languages hear them as different sounds.

Each person's ears are tuned to hear only the sounds that distinguish one word from another in his own language. Linguists call these sounds phonemes, and each language has its own set.

In contrast to English, with 45 phonemes, Rotokas has only 11. There are thousands of words in the language. To compensate for the scarcity of phonemes, the words tend to be very long.

Phonemes by Eye and By Ear

In Australia, SIL linguist Jean Kirton related: "To catch onto the sounds of Yanyuwa, I was always jotting down words I heard people speak, with my eyes glued to the notebook.

"But one time my notebook was tucked away because my hands were full. A friend had just given us some beef. When he said 'goodbye' l saw the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

"That's how I discovered the interdental (between-the-teeth) L phoneme of the language, which I had missed by not watching."

Since the Yanyuwa used two different L sounds in speaking, she included two different L letters in the alphabet.