Letters and Sounds

The number of sounds, or phonemes, differs among languages. Some languages have a small set of phonemes, while others are more varied. For example, Hawaiian has one of the smallest phoneme inventories, with just eight consonants (p, k, ʔ [glottal stop], m, n, l, h, and w) and five vowels (a, e, i, o, and u). In contrast, European languages show significant variation in phoneme counts. Italian, for instance, has 28 phonemes, English has 36 (or 49 when diphthongs are included), and some languages, like Danish, have even more.

Many sounds are nearly universal, found in most languages worldwide, while others are unique to only a few. Fortunately, Indonesian has a relatively simple phonetic inventory, while most European languages have a much larger number of sounds. As a result, it should be easier for speakers of European languages to pronounce Indonesian accurately than it is for an Indonesian speaker to pronounce a European language.

However, even though English speakers are well-equipped to pronounce Indonesian accurately, they often struggle—not because the Indonesian sounds are difficult, but because they are misled by their own inefficient and inaccurate spelling system.

For example, the word for the island of Bali consists of four letters, with the second letter “a” pronounced like the “a” in “father.” However, nearly every native English speaker pronounces the “a” in Bali as if it were the “a” in “ball”, resulting in a corrupted pronunciation. In Indonesian, the letter “a” is always pronounced like the “a” in “father” or “arm”. Yet, many English speakers pronounce the word orang as if it rhymed with “bang”.

The correct pronunciation, however, is: .

Therefore, it is crucial to develop an awareness that most spelling systems worldwide are insufficient and often poorly reflect the sound system of their language. The first step is to understand the difference between spelling and pronunciation, between letter and sound, between grapheme and phoneme.

Phonemes and Graphemes

A phoneme and a grapheme are both fundamental concepts in linguistics, but they refer to different aspects of language:

1. Phoneme:
   • A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. For example, in English, the words “bat” and “pat” differ by only one phoneme, /b/ and /p/, which changes the meaning of the word. Phonemes are abstract representations of sounds and are language-specific.
2. Grapheme:
   • A grapheme is the smallest unit of written language that represents a phoneme in a language’s writing system. In other words, a grapheme is a letter or combination of letters that corresponds to a sound. For instance, in English, the letter “b” is a grapheme that represents the phoneme /b/. Graphemes can be single letters (like “t”) or combinations of letters (like “sh” in “ship” or “ea” in “read”).

Key Difference:

• Phonemes are related to spoken language and are about sounds.
• Graphemes are related to written language and are about letters or symbols that represent those sounds.

In summary, phonemes are the sounds we produce and hear in speech, while graphemes are the symbols we use to represent those sounds in writing.