Words & WritingGreek → English
Phonology
/fəˈnɒlədʒi/noun
The study of how a language organises its speech sounds into a working system.
The Greek roots
φωνή
phōnḗ
sound, voice
λόγος
lógos
account, study
Literally: “study of sound”
The story of the word
The word turned up around 1800 meaning little more than the study of speech sounds in general. Its present job was fixed by the Prague Circle in the 1920s and 30s, which drove a line between phonetics and phonology: phonetics measures what the mouth actually does, phonology maps which of those differences a given language counts as meaningful. English treats the gap between pin and bin as meaning; the puff of air after the p it ignores completely.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- around 1800
Same family
phonemetelephonesymphonyeuphonymegaphone
In a sentence
Greek phonology lost the distinction between long and short vowels centuries before the spelling caught up.