For most readers, this is a new word. Roughly speaking, it means the set of sounds in a language. We are accustomed to using written letters to organize our language into words, grammar and the expression of meaning. But there are other ways of organizing a language: by its sounds, not its letters. For example, the ‘c’ in the word ‘cool’ is the same sound as the letter ‘k’ in ‘leek’. Though different letters, they are the same sound – just one sound in a phoneme ‘alphabet’.

Yes, this topic is extremely esoteric, Mariner is attracted to any topic that has to do with hearing and speaking. The marvel of science that could make a scientist the richest man in the world would be to emulate the mechanics of hearing.

His experience with hearing aids is subpar. It seems that trying to convert sound waves into human speech is flawed. Every human listening system is slightly different because brains are different, bone structure is different, language expectations are different (budder in the US is the same word as buTTa in England or ‘sar’ in Massachusetts versus ‘saw’ in the rest of the US. Mariner’s pleasing favorite is anything Fats Domino says; mariner’s favorites are ‘haut’ for ‘heart’ and the permanent replacement of a short ĭ with a long ē – My haut stood steel on Blueberry Heel).

He has noticed that in general practice, there is a human who translates sounds between two incommunicable groups – either a translator of language or a converter changing sounds to hand gestures. Hearing aids don’t have translators; they only hear sound waves without intelligent interpretation.

Perhaps hearing aids should have a phoneme lexicon built in. Computer storage can store a sound value on an atom these days. Why not build a phonemic dictionary into hearing aids; adaptability to parochial sounds could be as rapid as human listening.

Here is the difficulty: Phonemes are categories rather than actual sounds, they are not tangible things; instead, they are abstract, theoretical types or groups that are only psychologically real. (In other words, we cannot hear phonemes, but we assume they exist because of how the sounds in languages create a pattern.) For example, the word ‘kicked’ has two ‘k’ sounds but they are not identical. The first k is clearly thrust from the throat and the second k is a collaboration between the tongue and the roof of the mouth.

Nevertheless, mariner feels there must be some form of phonemic intelligence incorporated into hearing aids.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner is an old codger. The wiring between his brain and his mouth is damaged. Consequently, he cannot recall words, especially nouns and names of things if the mouth is asking for them – the brain knows but won’t tell until five minutes later when he doesn’t need the word anymore. On the other hand, when he is typing, he has almost his entire lexicon at hand; words fall in as needed and he can manipulate meanings with unending suffixes and metaphors.

It doesn’t help that mariner can’t hear other people’s words, either. He wears hearing aids.

Mariner was poking around on the Internet looking for information about his issue. He was familiar with the general explorations of language as a deep survival skill and as a social skill as well. Just as with whales and many birds, humans have a brain that, when as young toddlers, the brain is quite adept at associating meaning with a given sound.

The following two paragraphs are from science journals. The topic is about the anatomical science of hearing and its chemical processes.

The investigation of organometallic compounds containing unsupported homoatomic metal-metal (M-M) bonds has been an area of major interest for decades. These compounds feature distinct, otherwise inaccessible bonding, such as M-M quadruple and quintuple bonds, and fascinating reactivity, including mimicking the reactions of C-C multiple bonds. Ultimately, the main driver for research in this area is to push the boundaries of bonding for a given element and, in doing so, rewrite the textbooks. On page 1147 of this issue, Boronski et al. (1) report the isolation of diberyllocene as the latest entrant in the field. Diberyllocene is a stable Be-Be bonded compound and is a relatively accessible source of nucleophilic beryllium, which has the potential to unlock the reactivity of organoberyllium with a vast array of new substrates.

Astrocytes are intimately associated with neurons and participate in a host of essential roles that facilitate synaptic transmission and circuit function. In neurons, heightened activity induces the expression of “immediate early genes,” which are predominately transcription factors that modify gene expression programs and activity-dependent epigenomic states, ultimately regulating circuit activity, plasticity, and associated behavioral outputs. However, whether heightened neuronal activity induces an analogous immediate early gene–like response in mature astrocytes and how this sculpts astrocytic transcriptional and epigenomic responses to regulate circuit function remain unclear.

Isn’t knowledge wonderful?

Ancient Mariner