Language is one of the most important characteristics of human behavior and has always been the result of studies in the academic world. However, as the years and with the so-called "globalization," language studies are no longer restricted to British or American English. Today, everyone speaks English as a second language.
Therefore, you will find different English-speaking accents, e.g., Japanese, Irish, Spanish, Portuguese. All of them have a distinctive accent of their mother tongue.
That's why it's so important to differentiate accents. With the study of phonology, you can recognize an accent more easily.
Phonetics and Phonology are part of the Linguistics area, a discipline that studies languages in structural terms. Linguistics is
the study of language, how it is structured, and how it works.
Several branches of linguistics go by their name, such as phonology and phonetics, morphology, syntax, discourse analysis, semantics, and sociolinguistics (PRATOR, 1957).
Phonetics and Phonology are the two branches of Linguistics that study sounds of human speech. With the current interest in better understanding the spoken languages
In the world, there has been a fundamental change in how a language is taught. Previously only American and British English were introduced, and the purpose of the teacher was to make the student look like a native.
Today, it is common to see textbooks with listening activities using "global English," or spoken by Chinese, Japanese, Irish, and Brazilians as a second language. In other words, studying English has never been so enjoyable. Still, it's more challenging to understand the English spoken by so many different accents.
How to differentiate phonetics and phonology?
According to Santos (2017), it can be said that Phonetics and Phonology are interconnected studies and interdependent on the sounds produced by human speech.
The difference is that the study of phonetics is dedicated to studying the sounds of speaks as isolated entities (phonatory) and the physical aspects of the phonemes (minimum unit of sound).
While phonology studies different international phonics, that is, the differences and distinct and contrasting features of the
phonemes, establishing the relationship between these elements and the conditions they combine to form morphemes, words, and phrases.
While Phonetics is concerned with the physical nature of the production and perception of speech sounds, Phonology focuses on how sounds are organized within a language, classifying them into units capable of distinguishing meanings.
