Some say [tometo] and some say [toməto], but regardless of the varied way the word is pronounced, somehow we still manage to understand tomato. George Yule addresses the slight variations of these sounds, known as allophones, and explains why they exist. In addition, he differentiates between phonemes and allophones, noting that swapping a phoneme in a word will result in a new meaning. I find this interesting; how is it possible that some changes in sounds do not affect a word but others do?

I also found the phonotactics section on page 46 fascinating! Yule’s examples of words like vig and [fsɪɡ] remind me of my childhood days playing scrabble. Especially at those game-breaking moments, when there would be no letters left and all the players would try to sound out the most awkward letter combinations in search of words, I think about how true phonotactics are. Daring as my friends and I might have been with some potential words, there were always some combinations of letters that clearly could not be potential words. It never needed to be questioned that zjag or oq are not words; now I am aware that my subconscious competency of phonotactics is responsible for this ability. While we do not tend to think about the rules of our language, they certainly do exist.

In fact, it makes me wonder, who is responsible for starting the English language? Were these initial rules set in place consciously or accidentally? Or to what extent was the English language planned? This class has been like an awakening and led me to question something that I had originally felt so sure of, my language.