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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 9 of 94 13 January 2008 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Serpent,
Most of our learners are intermediate or better and come with varying abilities to pronounce English. I notice improvement in some when it comes to intonation. We try to get them to relax and feel more confident. Most of the improvement I notice has to do with the use of words and natural phrasing and general fluency. I cannot say that I notice great improvement in the enunciation of sounds. The largest single source country for our members is Japan. They are often familiar with IPA but pronunciation success varies widely. I believe that a willingness to leave your own culture behind and play act, pretend to be someone of another culture, is the key to pronunciation. I often marvel at actors from one part of the English speaking world who manage to imitate the accent of another region very effectively. I have heard the same in French and I presume actors are good at that sort of thing. I think pronunciation is a matter of acting, without being self-conscious. I really do not think the IPA is a big factor, either way. For me, terms like alveolar etc. just have no meaning. I listen. I hear the Russian "l", and it is heavier, and I try to reproduce it in context, because I imagine myself Russian when I speak Russian. Ditto for the heavy "s" from Spain, or the different "l"s between Portugal and Brazio, and on and on. To me it is all about listening and not worrying about perfection, and pretending you are from another culture. I call it temporary cultural weightlessness and it is an important part of pronunciation, to me, more important than IPA. But I agree that pronunciation is a hard nut to crack. Some people are just better at it than others, and it does not really matter in terms of communication. It is more a superficial thing, a question of first impressions,and of vanity for the learner. Edited by Zhuangzi on 13 January 2008 at 8:09pm 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 10 of 94 13 January 2008 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
That is a fact. Here is a true story: Two years ago the company I work for needed 15 employees to speak Portuguese like natives from Portugal in order to save the jobs of the staff. It had lost a big Spanish client and the only way to keep afloat at that moment was working for a Portuguese client. We were sent to Lisbon for 3 months, and when we came back we needed to sound Portuguese on the phone. If you work willingly on your accent you end up fooling people. Before that we had only 2 months of classes twice a week. Despite all its similarities with Spanish, Portuguese phonetics is a quite hard matter for Spanish speakers, but we dind't need any IPA, just a complete immersion of 3 months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 11 of 94 13 January 2008 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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guilon,
If only the Portuguese would pronounce their vowels! I have been spending the last week on Portuguese (taking a break from Russian). But all the audio content I could find was from Brazil (Brazio). Today I spoke to a Portuguese learner of our for one of our podcasts. http://thelinguist.blogs.com/portugueselingq/ I spoke to him in my semi-Spanish semi-Portuguese. I had trouble understanding him because he never pronounced a vowel. On the other hand I did a podcast in Spanish with a learner of ours from Venezuela, http://thelinguist.blogs.com/Spanishlingq/ I really wonder what IPA would do with these regional variations of the language, not to mention me speaking like a gringo. 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 12 of 94 13 January 2008 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wonder how you deal with vowel reduction in Russian then, especially in casual speech, e.g. zdravstvujte is usually turned into zdrass't(e).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 13 of 94 13 January 2008 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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нет проблем.I just follow what I hear. I had a discussion once with a Czech. I told him that I speak Russian "plocha"., he insisted it was "plocho", He is influenced too much by what he reads. If I hear Ivan Ivanich instead of Ivan Ivanovich, that is what I go with. Tchaikovski has become Tch'kowski. No problem.
It is like the many non-native speakers who want to so "warrald" instead of "wrld" for "world", "warrd" instead of "wrd" for "word" etc. You have to listen!!!!! Vowel reduction is not a big problem, and if I could spend a few weeks in Russia it would be less of a problem. 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 14 of 94 13 January 2008 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well plocha with a clear A does sound plocho :) I'd say a schwa is better (the vowel sound in the second syllable in "better", which is showed by ə in IPA btw;) I think good guides on Russian pronunciation mention this.
And note that a lot depends on the speed of your speech. If you speak slowly Ivan Ivanich will probably sound uneducated/rural. Edited by Serpent on 13 January 2008 at 11:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 15 of 94 14 January 2008 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I did a youtube in Russian a few months ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDBhUwQL_ls. Go easy on me. I do not aspire or pretend to accuracy, neither in syntax or pronunciation. Mostly I listen, read and enjoy it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6552 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 16 of 94 14 January 2008 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't think of a single language where I'd use IPA as a tool to help learn pronunciation. In my case, there may be a language for which it makes sense, but I don't know what it would be. For Thai, Mandarin and Japanese I've used forms of transliteration as a tool to get a handle on pronunciation. But I've never used IPA - it was never the transliteration of choice.
However, to imply that IPA is useless as a language learning tool is incorrect IMO. It's the main transliteration tool for Thais learning english, and I know that millions of others use it as an aid for learning pronunciation. It may be a poor tool, and certainly isn't a replacement for listening, but the shear number of people using it around the world should keep one from dismissing it as useless. If one says "it's useless for me" I believe them. But If one says
I will disagree. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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