1091: Allophones (Articulation) Dec 4, 2017

As discussed yesterday, if a phoneme consistently morphs into a different sound in a consistent phonetic context, this means that the sound which it becomes is an 'allophone'. Another example from English that was not looked at yesterday was that the glottal stop [ʔ] and the tap [ɾ] are considered allophones of [t] because they appear as the onset for certain syllables (which will be discussed specifically during Word Facts' Syllable and Stress Week starting December 9th) such as in 'butter': [bʊɾɚ] in Standard American English and [bʊʔə] in some northern dialects of British English. There all should make sense as allophones, as they all (including the examples from yesterday) share the same manner of articulation (row on the chart below) or place of articulation (column on the chart below).

It may sound odd at first, but in kiSwahili, [d] as in 'delta' is considered an allophone of [l] as in 'lima'. This is because, before an [n], [l] becomes a [d], such as in 'ulimi' meaning 'language' or 'message', which, when pluralized with 'n-' becomes 'ndimi'. Not only that, but also [l] and [d] share the same manner of articulation.