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International Phonetic Alphabet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| matematikniels Tetraglot Groupie Denmark Joined 6254 days ago 78 posts - 84 votes  Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 17 of 94 14 January 2008 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
In the other thread
I don't always find IPA as a symbol system helpful, I never took the trouble to remember all the symbols. On the other hand, the theory behind it is very helpful for me. E.g., when I'm told that b/v between vowels in Spanish is a voiced bilabial fricative, it actually helps me to produce the sound. For me, hearing the sound is indispensable, but not always enough. I can't always hear where to put my tongue, lips etc. And I'm not satisfied with descriptions that are not exact, as in "it's almost like w, but no rounded lips". For learners who do not know phonetic terms, I think the best approach (1) tells you what to do with your mouth, (2) labels the positions, and (3) contrasts with your native language (or the language you use for learning. That's want I find at the the site I mentioned in the quote. Edited by matematikniels on 14 January 2008 at 4:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7030 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 18 of 94 14 January 2008 at 7:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, most of my opinions about IPA are in that other thread, but I might just as well do a bit of summary to be included in this discussion.
1. I am a huge fan of IPA in the linguistic/academic sense, albeit somewhat irrelevant to the main topic. 2. While learning languages, I occasionally refer to the IPA to double-check. 3. My primary tool for learning pronunciations is, like most others, listening and repeating, and I mainly use IPA as a transcription tool, for example in English and French. 4. My feeling is that IPA works better for some languages than for others in general (some has cited Czech as having sounds that aren't appropriately treated in IPA; I think it's hard to rely on IPA for English because it's got so many regional differences; that seems to be the reason why most English dictionary invent their own phonetics) 5. It's definitely not a must for beginnersl; for me it's a way to maintain integrity of all the languages that I know since I can cross-compare between them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6868 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 19 of 94 14 January 2008 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't really have an opinion about this subject, but I would just like to point out that not even all professional linguists seem to like IPA. Edited by Eriol on 17 January 2008 at 9:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6661 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 20 of 94 14 January 2008 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a Portuguese-English/English-Portuguese dictionary that uses the IPA to show how words are pronounced. If I encounter a written word in Portuguese and want to know how it is pronounced, the IPA is helpful.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 94 14 January 2008 at 10:41am | IP Logged | ||
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IPA can help if I don't have access to a computer. I think it's safe to assume that we all prefer to hear the actual sound (preferably from a living person). I also prefer to hear a piece of music instead of deciphering the staff notation - although I do know how to read music.
So, IPA can be helpful if you know it, but not if you don't know it. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 14 January 2008 at 12:56pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| edwin Triglot Senior Member Canada towerofconfusi&Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6466 days ago 160 posts - 183 votes 9 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French, Spanish, Portuguese | Message 22 of 94 14 January 2008 at 11:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with those of you who mentioned that IPA is only good for English (and probably some other similar languages). In fact, IPA is very English-centric. I think the word 'International' is very misleading.
I am not an expert in IPA, but I always have this impression that IPA always fails to cover the sounds of other languages. There are always exceptions or added symbols, or stuff like that. I often come across pronunciation explanations of other languages, which would say, "this sound is close to that IPA sound" (but not exactly the same). Thanks so much for the Internationalization of IPA! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| edwin Triglot Senior Member Canada towerofconfusi&Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6466 days ago 160 posts - 183 votes 9 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French, Spanish, Portuguese | Message 23 of 94 14 January 2008 at 11:23am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks, Jeff. I hope some people would find your comment helpful. 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 24 of 94 14 January 2008 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
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Inspired by this exchange I decided to really look into IPA and perhaps learn it. A quick search on the Internet provided a lot of information. The more I looked into it the less interested I became. It seems to me that the bulk of consonants and their symbols are common to most languages using Latin letters, with the degree of hardness of aspiration varying from language to language. I would have to listen in any case. Certain symbols seem to vary a lot, like "ch" or "j" or "x" or in the case of Brazilan "r" all standing for the same sound.
Vowels are all over the place and any attempt to explain what happens seems infinitely more complicated than just listening. One needs to listen to so many hundreds of hours of a language to learn it, I really do not see the benefit of the IPA approach for language learning. In fact it would discourage me (see the Russian excerpt below), just as complicated grammar explanations discourage me. I agree that for linguists talking about different languages or dialects the IPA would be extremely useful, but I really do not see if for language learning. The table of IPA applied to English is here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_chart_for_English for Mandarin it is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Mandarin#Phonology for Russian here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology Here is an excerpt from the Russian Front vowels When a preceding consonant is hard, /i/ is retracted to [ɨ]. While this is phonetically central, for phonological purposes it is considered back. When unstressed, /i/ becomes near-close; that is, [ɨ̞] following a hard consonant and [ɪ] in most other environments. Between soft consonants, both stressed and unstressed /i/ are raised,[2] as in пить [pʲi̝tʲ] ('to drink') and маленький [ˈmalʲɪ̝nʲkʲɪj] ('small'). When preceded and followed by coronal or dorsal consonants, [ɨ] is fronted to [ɨ̟].[3] After a labial + /l/ cluster, [ɨ] is retracted, as in плыть [plɨ̠tʲ] ('to float'); it is also slightly diphthongized to [ɯ̟ɨ̟].[4] In native words, /e/ only follows unpaired (i.e. the retroflexes and /t͡s/) and palatalized consonants. After palatalized consonants (but not before), it is a mid vowel ([e̞] or [ɛ̝]), while a following palatalized consonant raises it to [e]. Another allophone, an open-mid [ɛ] occurs word-initially and never before or after palatalized consonants (hereafter [ɛ̝] is represented without the diacritic for simplicity).[5] Preceding hard consonants retract /e/ to [ɛ̠] and [e̠][6] so that жест ('gesture') and цель ('target') are pronounced [ʐɛ̠st] and [t͡se̠lʲ] respectively. In words borrowed from other languages, it is often the case that /e/ does not follow a palatalized consonant until the word has been fully adopted into Russian.[7] For instance, шофёр (from French chauffeur) was pronounced [ʂoˈfɛr] in the early twentieth century but is now pronounced [ʂɐˈfʲor].[citation needed] On the other hand, the pronunciations of words such as отель [ɐˈtɛlʲ] ('hotel') retain the hard consonants despite a long presence in the language. Suffice it to say that 1 person has voted this message useful |
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