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International Phonetic Alphabet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Zhuangzi Nonaglot Language Program Publisher Senior Member Canada lingq.com Joined 7030 days ago 646 posts - 688 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Japanese, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 94 13 January 2008 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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This discussion began on the tail end of another thread. Some of the participants there may want to paste their comments here.
I do not know the IPA. I do not use the IPA. In learning over 10 languages I have never been motivated to learn it because I do not see any need for it. I will give my reasons. I would be interested in the views of others. I am aware that mine might be a minority opinion. I should add that I am not an academic student of languages nor an academic linguist. I learn languages because I enjoy languages. I learn the pronunciation of a language by listening. I listen often. At first I listen to the same content often. I do not spend a lot of time repeating individual sounds. I listen to interesting content, and occasionally repeat words and phrases that I hear. When I studied Chinese I made a more deliberate attempt to record and compare myself to the native speaker but since then I have not done that, not for Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Russian, Portuguese, German, or any other language. I believe that pronunciation is a part of the language learning process, which is a process of getting used to the language, of getting comfortable in it. This is done through intensive exposure, meaningful exposure and hopefully enjoyable exposure. I do not pursue perfection. I do not pursue perfect pronunciation. I have never understood diagrams of where to put my tongue in my mouth. I see the IPA symbols and ignore them. i just listen. I know I will not be able to pronounce well at first. Even if I am able to hear the new sounds,I will not be able to pronounce properly in any kind of context since I am not yet comfortable in the language. In the beginning I am self-conscious, even when talking to myself. Only after lots of exposure do I start to get the rhythm, to feel comfortable in the language. I have observed that often people who have trouble pronouncing can make the individual sounds of the language, they just cannot make them when they need to. They are not yet close enough to the language, not yet used to it enough. I can correct them while speaking, they repeat correctly for me, and then at the next opportunity make the same mistake again. I am working on Russian, Korean and Portuguese right now. Different writing systems, regional accents, strange new sounds etc. I simply do not see how learning the IPA would help me more than just doing what I am doing now, listening, reading and learning words and phrases. But I am sure that on a forum like this my views on this are not widely shared. Edited by Zhuangzi on 13 January 2008 at 5:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6318 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 2 of 94 13 January 2008 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I know the IPA, but I would never use it to learn the pronunciation of a language, because listening is how you learn to pronounce correctly. There is no substitute for it, and sounds I have had difficulties with have become gradually easier through repetitive listening. The IPA is perhaps useful for dictionaries for non-phonetic languages, such as English, but the pronunciations can now easily be heard online. The IPA really belongs to linguistics, for linguists to describe the phonologies of other languages. As a language learner, it doesn't interest me at all.
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| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7190 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 3 of 94 13 January 2008 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I use the IPA when first starting a new language to familiarize myself with the sounds I'm going to be encountering. After that initial process, the IPA is used when I'm unsure of a sound. Audio is no doubt the best tool, but occasionally there are sounds I will hear, and still not be able to tell what exactly that sound is. I can't immagine having to stumble around for a while with imprecise approximations until I finally figure out what it is I'm doing wrong.
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| jody Senior Member United States Joined 6240 days ago 242 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Bulgarian | Message 4 of 94 13 January 2008 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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IPA is useless...for me. To learn the IPA would require learning a new alphabet that only kinda makes all the right sounds. YHou are right...listening is the key.
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| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6246 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 5 of 94 13 January 2008 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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the IPA can have it's uses. mainly in dictionaries, but only for such languages as english, which have a highly irregular pronunciation. otherwhise, when you are familiar with the sounds of a language you can pronounce a new word in no time.
(actually, most of the time, that's the case in english too) i never saw any use in the IPA, especially not language learning. and even if you know how to read it, you still have to know how to pronounce the sound. for some reason, i actually got to learn the IPA passively while learning english in school. (in that my teacher explained all the symbols and consistently wrote them next to each new word) some symbols stuck obviosly, but i never found any particular use for them. especially since even the IPA cannot really represent those sounds in order for someone to produce them directly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6905 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 6 of 94 13 January 2008 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a mixed approach to pronunciation learning. Mostly I just listen to recordings and repeat but sometimes I also read more or less theoretic descriptions of particular sounds or phonetics of my target language. I do know IPA, but I would never rely on it only - the exposure to the sounds of language is the most important thing to me.
But I still think IPA may be worth learning. I use IPA ex. when I learn English - it's easy to avoid if you use audio recordings/computer exclusively in your vocabulary learning, but I also use my notes or texts on paper so I write down the IPA transcriptions of words I'm not sure about. I prefer to use IPA transcription than any poor "quasi transcription" in Polish. And still there are always a few phonetic features in every language that I wouldn't probably hear easily without some phonetic explanation and/or IPA. For instance I have significant problems with distinguishing between voiced and voiceless consonants at the end of the word. Some vowels (ex. in English) used to sound identical to me until I started to compare my hunch with the transcription in a dictionary... I'm not exactly a big fan of IPA and I never used it while Spanish, Italian or Czech learning (I didn't need it at all) but it's extremely helpful when you have to learn a highly non-phonetical language with a bunch of vowels that they're nothing like your mother tongue - i.e. English. --- Did you find a mistake in my post? I'll appreciate if you send me a PM - I'd like to improve my English. Edited by Julie on 13 January 2008 at 7:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 94 13 January 2008 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that IPA is mostly good for languages like English with a lot of exceptions. On the other hand, I don't quite understand how one can learn to pronounce sounds correctly just by listening - as far as I understand, only children have the abilities to do so, and even some of them pronounce some sounds of their native language incorrectly. I do believe one has to read some theoretical descriptions, because sometimes the difference is obvious to a native speaker, but not to a learner. For example, when I posted a sound of myself speaking Finnish about a year ago, I was told that my n's gave me away as a non-native speaker, because in Finnish n is alveolar and in Russian it's dental (if words like that make your hair stand on end: it means that in Russian you put the end of your tongue on your teeth to pronounce [n] and in Finnish you put it on the thing behind your teeth, like in English).
Zhuangzi, if I'm not wrong you work a lot with non-native speakers of English. Do many of them manage to learn to pronounce th correctly just through listening? (those who haven't learned even basic English at school) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| guilon Pentaglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6194 days ago 226 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Spanish*, PortugueseC2, FrenchC2, Italian, English | Message 8 of 94 13 January 2008 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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