December 23, 2022

FRANZ KAFKA (1883 –1924), ONE OF THE SIGNIFICANT AUSTRIAN (CZECH) JEWISH NOVELISTS AND SHORT STORY WRITERS OF THE 20TH-CENTURY MODERN WORLD LITERATURE.

 

“It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”  ~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

 “Logic may indeed be unshakeable, but it cannot withstand a man who is determined to live.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice‎

 

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

 

“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910 1923

 

“Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”

~ Franz Kafka, Kafka's Selected Stories

 

“My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest – so what is it then?”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“Since I met you, I've felt abandoned without your nearness; your nearness is all I ever dream of, the only thing.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“I'm on such a dangerous road, Milena. You're standing firmly near a tree, young, beautiful, your eyes subduing with their radiance the suffering world.”

~ Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

 

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

 

“The man in ecstasy and the man drowning—both throw up their arms.”

~ Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

 

“Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair. Just when everything seems over with, new forces come marching up, and precisely that means that you are alive. And if they don't, then everything is over with here, once and for all.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.”

~ Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

 

“Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”

~ Franz Kafka, The Castle

 

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...”

~ Franz Kafka, The Great Wall of China

 

“It's sometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to encompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in one's work here.”

~ Franz Kafka, The Trial


December 11, 2022

WALTER SCOTT, IN FULL SIR WALTER SCOTT, 1ST BARONET (1771 –1832) WAS A LEADING SCOTTISH NOVELIST, POET, AND CRITIC.

 

“A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them.”  ~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Wounds sustained for the sake of conscience carry their own balsam with the blow.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity, when exposed for a season to the winter air.”

~ Walter Scott, Redgauntlet

 

“I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom," he said to himself, "but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“I should be rather like the wild hawk, who, barred the free exercise of his soar through heaven, will dash himself to pieces against the bars of his cage.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Everything is possible for him who possesses courage and activity….and to the timid and hesitating everything is impossible, because it seems so.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play.”

~ Walter Scott, Rob Roy

 

“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.”

~ Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel 1805

 

“Upon subjects which interested him, and when quite at ease, he possessed that flow of natural, and somewhat florid eloquence, which has been supposed as powerful as figure, fashion, fame, or fortune, in winning the female heart. There”

~ Walter Scott, Waverley

 

“I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.”

~ Walter Scott, Tales of My Landlord

 

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”

~ Walter Scott, Marmion

 

“We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“the worst evil which befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury, and to smile tamely, when we would revenge bravely.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

 

“Your lordship’s servant has a sensible, natural, pretty idea of military matters; somewhat irregular, though, and smells a little too much of selling the bear’s skin before he has hunted him.”

~ Walter Scott, A Legend of Montrose

 

“Blessed be his name, who hath appointed the quiet night to follow the busy day, and the calm sleep to refresh the wearied limbs and to compose the troubled spirit.”

~ Walter Scott, The Talisman

 

“The rose is fairest when 't is budding new,

And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;

The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew

And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.”

 

~ Walter Scott, The Lady Of The Lake: Canto Iv. - The Prophecy

 

“I'll listen, till my fancy hears

The clang of swords' the crash of spears!

These grates, these walls, shall vanish then

For the fair field of fighting men,

And my free spirit burst away,

As if it soared from battle fray.”

~ Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake

 

“A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them.”

~ Walter Scott, Ivanhoe


December 1, 2022

HENRY JAMES, (1843 –1916), WAS A PROMINENT AMERICAN NOVELIST AND CRITIC.

 

“Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.”  ~ Henry James, Letter to Grace Norton [July 28,1883]

 

 “We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

~ Henry James, The Middle Years

 

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

~ Henry James, Letter to H. G. Wells, [10 July 1915]

 

“I'm yours for ever for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.”

~ Henry James, Letter to Grace Norton [July 28,1883]

 

“True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.”

~ Henry James, Roderick Hudson

 

“You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

~ Henry James, The Ambassadors

 

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.”

~ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.”


~ Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

 

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.”

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

 

“Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”

~ Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James

 

“I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.”
 

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady


November 22, 2022

GEORGE ELIOT, PSEUDONYM OF MARY ANN, OR MARIAN, CROSS, NÉE EVANS, (1819- 1880) WAS AN ENGLISH NOVELIST, WHO STANDS AMONGST THE FIRST-RANKED WRITERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY.

 

“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”  ~ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”

~ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

 

“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.”

~ George Eliot, Adam Bede

 

“Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”

~ George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

 

“Blameless people are always the most exasperating.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

 “And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.”

~ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

 

“No anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“I am not imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?”

~ George Eliot, Adam Bede

 

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.”

~ George Eliot, Adam Bede

 

“Hurt, he'll never be hurt--he's made to hurt other people.”

~ George Eliot, Silas Marner

 

“Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.”

~ George Eliot, Mr Gilfil's Love Story

 

“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch

 

“Those bitter sorrows of childhood!-- when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.”

~ George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

 

“The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.”

~ George Eliot, Middlemarch


December 22, 2020

Definition

A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound that distinguishes one word from another word in a particular language. Each phoneme represents the smallest contrastive sound unit which may bring about a change in the word meaning. Traditionally, the linguists put the phonemes between slash marks. For instance: the words “mat” and “hat” are separated from each other based on the initial sound, that is /m/ and /h/ respectively.

Etymology

The English word phoneme was first used in the late 19th century. It came via the French word phonème, which was borrowed from Greek phōnēma meaning “speech sound or utterance”, from phōnein meaning “to make sounds, speak”, from phōnē, meaning “sound, voice”.


Origin of Phoneme

Discussion

The phonemes encompass the possible small subsets of sounds that humans can produce through the speech organs. However, not all of the producible speech sounds are categorized as distinct phonemes since a particular sound may be pronounced in many different ways. Hence, the number of distinct phonemes is always lesser than perceptively different sounds. The phoneme sets may vary depending on the language system. But the five vowel sounds /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ are present in most languages. Likewise, the consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/ are found nearly in all languages.

We should keep in mind that the phonemes are not letters; rather they simply refer to the sounds of a spoken utterance. Different phonemic symbols are employed to represent each phoneme. The one-part sounds are represented by a single letter, for instance, /p/ in “mop” and /t/ in “mat”. On the other hand, the two-part sounds are represented by a combination of letters, for example, /ʧ/ in “cherry” and /ʤ/ in “judge”.

The Functions of the Phonemes

The phonemes have the following three functions:

  • Distinctive Function: It is the principle function of the phonemes. The phonemes can distinguish one morpheme from others, one word from others. This function could be subcategorized  in the following vein:
    1. Morpheme distinctive: season-seasonal
    2. Word or form distinctive: /bad/-/lad/
    3. Sentence distinctive: Where is the hat? Where is the hut?
  • Constitutive Function: The phonemes in isolation do not convey any meaning, but when they are combined they constitute meaningful words and morphemes. For example, the English phonemes /t/, /æ/and /b/ may constitute the words /tæb/ “tab” and /bæt/ “bat”.
  • Recognitive (Identificatory) Function: We can separately recognize individual words due to the ordered cluster of their phonemes. Therefore, using the right phoneme in the right place is necessary to facilitate identifying different words.

Tools to identify a phoneme

Based on the phonological variation, the phonemes can be identified through the undermentioned tools:

1. Contrastive Sounds:

If two sounds are separate phonemes, then they are considered to be contrastive. Such sounds can be identified through the following principle:

Contrastive Distribution

In contrastive distribution when two sounds are placed in the same phonetic positions, they produce two different words.


Contrastive Distribution

Based on the contrastive distribution, different types of contrastive pairs could be taken into account to determine the phonemes of a language:
i. Minimal Pairs

Minimal pairs are two identical sounding words containing the same number of sounds that can be distinguished by a single phoneme appearing in the same position in both words. The criteria for determining a minimal pair are:

  • Both words will have the same number of sounds.
  • The adjacent sounds must be identical except for the contrastive sound.
  • The contrastive sound must be distributed in the same position in both words.
  • The words must be semantically different.

For example, “rice” and “lice” are different from each other in meaning as they have different initial phonemes, that is,  /r/ and /l/ respectively. 

ii. Minimal Sets

Minimal sets are more than two identical sounding words that can be differentiated by a single phoneme occurring in the same position in all the words. The following are the criteria for determining minimal sets:

  • A group of words.
  • The adjoining sounds must be identical except for one sound.
  • The contrasting sound must occur in the same place in the string.
  • All of the words must have different meanings.

For example, feat, fit, fat, fought, foot (vowel phonemes) and big, rig, fig, dig, wig (consonant phonemes).

iii. Near-minimal Pair

Where minimal pairs are not available, contrasts are illustrated through near-minimal pair. Near-minimal pair is a roughly identical pair of words having the dissimilar number of sounds that are distinguished by a few or more than one phoneme. Whereas minimal pairs are very limited in number, near minimal pairs are very easy to find. Therefore, the latter is the most dependable procedure for identifying phonemes.

Some examples of near-minimal pairs include:

get – guest

knees – sneeze

shoe – show

soup – snoop

tote – toast

feet – feast

2. Non-contrastive Sounds:

The sounds that do not make a difference in meaning are called non-contrastive sounds. Non-contrastive variants of a phoneme are referred to allophones. To be specific, when a phoneme is pronounced in two or more different ways then each variation is called the allophone of the same phoneme. They usually occur in different positions (i.e., environments or contexts) in the words.  However, these variations are not separate phonemes as they cannot contrast with each other, nor be employed to make meaningful distinctions.

The articulatory and acoustic distinctions of allophones are conditioned by:

  • The position of the sound.
  • The surrounding phonemes in the word or sentence.
  • The dialectal variations in pronunciation.
  • Language difference.
  • Social factors.
  • The pitch, tempo and stress of speech.

In contrast to phonemes, the allophones are written between square brackets. For example, in English, the phoneme /p/ has three variants:


Sl.

Allophones

Determining Factor

Distribution

Example

  1.  

[pʰ]

Strongly Aspirated

Word-initially

pot

  1.  

[p]

Weakly Aspirated

After “s”

spot

  1.  

[p¬]

Unaspirated

Word-finally

stop


There are different principles for discovering allophones:

i. Complementary Distribution

It is a distribution of a pair of speech sounds where the two sounds never occur in the same phonetic position. This simply means that only one sound of the pair will be found in a certain position, while the other sound will be found in everywhere else. They are generally the allophones of the same phoneme as they do not contrast with each other.

For example, in English, the aspirated [pʰ] can only be found at the beginning of a stressed syllable as in “pot”, while the unaspirated [p] is never found at the beginning of a syllable but can be found in other positions as in “spot”.


Complementary Distribution


ii. Free Variation

When two different sounds occur in the same phonetic position without causing any change of meaning are said to be in free variation. That means, this principle does not try to contrast meanings in two different words, rather it simply to shows that there are two different ways of pronouncing the same word. Such allophones of a phoneme may arise due to different dialects, sociolinguistic or geographical factors.

For example, the word “either” may be pronounced as [aɪðər] or [iːðər].

Free Variation

Types of Phonemes

1. Vowels

Features

Examples

Closeness

Frontness

Lip Rounding

 

 

Long Vowels

Close

Front

Unrounded

/i:/ as in sheep

Close

Back

Rounded

/u:/ as in food

Open-mid

Central

Unrounded

/ɜ:/ as in fern

Open-mid

Back

Rounded

/ɔ:/ as in board

Open

Back

Unrounded

/ɑ:/ as in car

 

 

 

Short Vowels

Near-close

Near-front

Unrounded

/ɪ/ as in ship

Near-close

Near-back

Rounded

/ʊ/ as in put

Open-mid

Front

Unrounded

/e/ as in pet

Near-open

Front

Unrounded

/æ/ as in cat

Open-mid

Back

Unrounded

/ʌ/ as in cup

Open

Back

Rounded

/ɒ/ as in dog

Mid

Central

Neutral

/ə/ as in garden


2. Diphthongs

Features

Examples

Starting  Point  of Glide

Finishing Point

Lip Rounding

 

 

 

Centring Diphthongs

/ɪ/

 

 

 

 

 

 

/ə/

The lips are neutral throughout, with a slight movement from spread to open

/ɪə / as in ear

/e/

The lips remain neutrally open throughout

/eə/ as in fare

/ʊ/

The lips are loosely rounded, becoming neutrally spread

/ʊə/ sure

 

 

 

 

 

Closing Diphthongs

/e/

 

 

 

/ɪ/

The lips are spread

/eɪ/ as in aid

/a/

The lips move from neutral to loosely spread

/aɪ/ as in isle

/ɔ/

Lips start open rounded and change to neutral

/ɔɪ/ as in oil

/ə/

 

 

 

 

/ʊ/

The lips are neutral but change to loosely rounded

/əʊ/ as in old

/a/

The lips start neutral with a movement to loosely rounded

/aʊ/ as in owl


3. Semi-vowels

Features

Examples

Place

Manner

Voicing

Lip Rounding

labio-velar

Glide

Voiced

Unrounded

/w/ as in west

Palatal

Glide

Voiced

Rounded

/j/as in yard


4. Consonants

Features

Examples

 

 

 

Plosives

Place

Manner

Voicing

Bilabial

Stop

Voiceless

/p/ as in pin

Stop

Voiced

/b/ as in bin

Alveolar

Stop

Voiceless

/t/ as in tin

Stop

Voiced

d/ as in dog

Velar

Stop

Voiceless

/k/ as in coffee

Stop

Voiced

/g/ as in gun

 

Nasals

Bilabial

Nasal

Voiced

/m/ as in mat

Alveolar

Nasal

Voiced

/n/ as in native

Velar

Nasal

Voiced

/ŋ/ as in bring

Affricates

Palato-alveolar

Affricate

Voiced

/ʧ/ as in cheap

Affricate

Voiceless

/dz/as in jam

 

 

 

 

Fricatives

Labio-dental

Fricative

Voiceless

/f/ as in fast

Fricative

Voiced

/v/ as in void

Dental

Fricative

Voiceless

/θ/ as in theme

Fricative

Voiced

/ð/ as in thus

Alveolar

Fricative

Voiceless

/s/ as in sit

Fricative

Voiced

/z/ as in zoo

Palato-alveolar

Fricative

Voiceless

/ʃ/ as in ship

Fricative

Voiced

/ʒ/ as in pleasure

Glottal

Fricative

Voiceless

/h/ as in hen

Lateral

Alveolar

Liquid

Voiced

/l/ as in lee

Alveolar

Liquid

Voiced

/ɫ / as in pool

Frictionless Continuant

Alveolar /Post-alveolar

Liquid

Voiced

/r/ as in rain





References

“Complementary distribution and Free variation.” ELLO. 2020. abergs. 14 November 2020

<http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/PhoneticsandPhonology/ComplementaryDistributionAndFreeVariation>.

 

 “Phoneme .” Wikipedia. 2020. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 November 2020

<https://www.thoughtco.com/phoneme-word-sounds-1691621>.

 

 “Phoneme .” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2020. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 14 November 2020

<https://www.britannica.com/topic/phoneme>.

 

 “Phoneme .” SIL. 2020. SIL International, Inc. 14 November 2020

<https://glossary.sil.org/term/phoneme>.

 

“Proverbs with diphthongs.” studfiles. 2020. studfiles. 14 November 2020

<https://studfile.net/preview/5650607/page:5/>.

 

Roach, Peter. English Phonetics and Phonology: A self-contained, comprehensive pronunciation course.

3rd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 2000.

 

Varshney, Dr. R.L.  An Introduction of Linguistics & Phonetics. Dhaka: BOC, n.d. 76-77.

 

Yule, George. The Study of Language. 2nd ed. Cambridge: CUP, 1996. 54-61.

 

 “What Is a Phoneme? .” ThoughtCo. 2020. dash. 14 December 2020

<https://www.thoughtco.com/phoneme-word-sounds-1691621>.


September 22, 2020

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807–1882) WAS A RENOWNED 19TH-CENTURY NOVELIST AND POET.


“No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own.”  ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1842)

“My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Secret of the Sea


“No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Endymion (1842)


“Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night


“Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day


“Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839)


“Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, Bk. IV, Ch. VIII (1839)


 “Thy fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Rainy Day


“I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Arrow and the Song (1845)


 “God sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Singers (1849)


“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine, st. 10


“A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Santa Filomena, st. 10 (1858)


“Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Pt. IV, The Cloisters (1872)


“The grave itself is but a covered bridge,
Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Pt. V, A Covered Bridge at Lucerne


“All nature, he holds, is a respiration
Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter
Will inhale it into his bosom again,
So that nothing but God alone will remain.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Pt. VI, A travelling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate of the College


“The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Holidays (1878)


“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christmas Bells


“For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus


“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night


“Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Builders (1849)


September 12, 2020

WALLACE STEVENS IS A 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN POET.

“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,  Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams  And our desires.” ~ Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning


“The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.”


~ Wallace Stevens, The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

 

“If sex were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Le Monocle de Mon Oncle

 

“We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

 

“For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”


~ Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

 

“The way through the world
Is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose

 

“I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

 

“The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Study of Two Pears

 

“Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill”


~ Wallace Stevens, A Postcard from the Volcano

 

“After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.”


~ Wallace Stevens, The Plain Sense of Things

 

“Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

 

“The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become,”


~ Wallace Stevens, The Sun This March

 

“In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
       Hills and a cloud.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Of the Surface of Things

 

“Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.”


~ Wallace Stevens, The Sun This March

 

“As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.”


~ Wallace Stevens, The Sun This March

 

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird


“After all the pretty contrast of life and death
Proves that these opposite things partake of one,
At least that was the theory, when bishops' books
Resolved the world. We cannot go back to that.
The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,
If one may say so. And yet relation appears,
A small relation expanding like the shade
Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Connoisseur of Chaos

 

“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

 

“Beauty is momentary in the mind—
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

 

The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.”


~ Wallace Stevens, Peter Quince at the Clavier


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