Phonetic reversal is the process of reversing the phonemes or phones of a word or phrase. When the reversal is identical to the original, the word or phrase is called a phonetic palindrome. Phonetic reversal is not entirely identical to backmasking, which is specifically the reversal of recorded sound. This is because pronunciation in speech causes a reversed diphthong to sound different in either direction (e.g. eye becoming yah ), or differently articulate a consonant depending on where it lies in a word, hence creating an imperfect reversal. Backmasking involves not only the reversal of the order of phonemes or phones, but the reversal of the allophonic realisations of those phonemes. Strictly speaking, a reversal of phonemes will still result in allophones appropriate for the new position, for example, if a word with a final /t/ is reversed so that the /t/ is initial, the initial /t/ will be aspirated in line with the conventional allophonic patterns of English phonology.
According to proponents of reverse speech, phonetic reversal occurs unknowingly during normal speech.
Read more about Phonetic Reversal: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words phonetic and/or reversal:
“The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
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