sound to a di"erent position too. We say that these two
allophones are in complementary distribution. That
means we can predict which allophone we’ll hear based on its
environment—the other sounds around it. This is a very
common situation in many languages.
Complementary distribution among allophones is a lot like
the comic book heroes Clark Kent and Superman. They’re
really both the same person, but you never see them at the
same time. When things are calm, you see mild-mannered
reporter Clark Kent. When there’s trouble, he turns into
Superman. The environment—a normal day or an emergency
—determines who we’ll see.
Every language is different
As we’ve said before, every language has its own set of
phonemes. Two sounds that are separate phonemes in one
language might be allophones of the same phoneme in
another language. For example, in English, /s/ and /ʃ/ are
separate phonemes. (See and she are di"erent words;
changing /s/ to /ʃ/ changes the meaning of the word.)
However, this is not the case in all languages. For example, in
Japanese these two sounds are allophones of the same
phoneme. They function as the same sound. If /s/ comes
before the vowel /i/, it sounds like [ʃ]. If it comes before any
other vowel, it sounds like [s]. The phoneme /s/ in a word
like /simbun/ (“newspaper”) is pronounced [∫] because
there’s an /i/ after it: [ʃimbun]. If someone pronounced it
[simbun], the word would sound odd, but it wouldn’t become
some other word. On the other hand, when /s/ is followed by
a vowel other than /i/, it sounds like [s], for example, in
words like /sakura/ (“cherry blossom”) or /seito/ (“student”).We sometimes hear teachers equate sounds in a new
language with sounds in the learner’s language. For example,
a teacher might say, “The English sound /t/ is pronounced
like the Spanish sound /t/ in tienda (shop).” However, these
sounds are actually not the same; the tongue is much farther
forward for the Spanish sound, right up against the teeth, and
farther back for the English /t/, on the ridge just behind the
teeth. In addition, the English sound is aspirated, or
pronounced with a small pu" of air, when it’s at the
beginning of a word, and the Spanish sound doesn’t have this
pu" of air.We need to be very careful to avoid teaching students that a
sound in a new language is “the same as” a sound in their
own language. Often the two sounds are similar, but not
exactly the same. It’s also not a good idea to transliterate
English words into another writing system as a pronunciation
aid. This often gives students a very inaccurate idea of what
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