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Should I trust the audio or the IPA? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5450 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 1 of 5 09 January 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
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Let's say that I am learning a language that does not have much resources to learn it from. The one resource that I manage to find includes an audio of a speaker, but the audio's pronunciation of some vowels are different from those of a trustworthy IPA chart made for that language. Should I trust the speaker or the IPA?
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| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5811 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 2 of 5 09 January 2010 at 9:35pm | IP Logged |
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Can you give us some concrete examples?
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| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5813 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 3 of 5 09 January 2010 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
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Pronunciation, especially of vowels, is something that is far from set in stone. Both are probably fine, but if there's a huge difference, trust the native speaker.
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| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5811 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 4 of 5 10 January 2010 at 8:53am | IP Logged |
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It may be a problem of accents: for example the IPA for Dutch usually represents R as [ɾ] even if many speakers
from the north say [ʁ] 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6770 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 5 10 January 2010 at 9:28am | IP Logged |
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The IPA can't express all the nuances and variation that can accompany the phonemes of a language. In that sense,
you should trust the audio. On the other hand, your own ears and brain will lie to you, by trying to hear the sounds in the way that is most familiar to you already given your linguistic background, and thus you will hear things incorrectly at first. I would say the IPA makes the best starting point. If you can form the sounds correctly, you know you're most of the way there. Then, tweak your speech by listening to audio, remembering that nearly every language has a spectrum of dialects and pronunciation variance — but never assume that you're repeating audio correctly. Only native speakers can reliably judge that. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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