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International Phonetic Alphabet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 65 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I was in an accent reduction course (for English), and the instructor drew an IPA vowel diagram. She placed some IPA vowel symbols on the diagram. Then she started to explain things like: the vowel in this English word is somewhere here in the diagram, between this and that IPA vowels. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6859 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 66 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't know if that's correct. There is a voiced "th" sound and a voiceless "th" sound. Is there an IPA symbol for either? Can someone who knows the IPA tell us? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 67 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Sounds reasonable.
It's still useful. English has two 'th' sounds, spelled the same way; how do you recommend differentiating them without hearing them? If you're in the rather reasonable situation of knowing all the sounds of English, and perhaps even having listened to a lot of it, you can still be unaware of how to pronounce some English words that you've read - as a native speaker, I don't know how to pronounce all the words I know and feel comfortable using in writing. At this point, assuming that you can't easily get an audio pronunciation of the word (which is, again, reasonable, especially for more obscure words), you need some kind of phonetic system. If you prefer ad-hoc ones over IPA, fine; but either way, you need something.
You're mixing up the phonetics of the language, which I agree you should not use IPA for (as people generally don't use all the little modifications to the IPA letters to specify as exactly as possible what the sounds actually are, among other problems), with whether or not IPA is useful at all. Let's say you know both th sounds: wonderful, now how do you differentiate them -in writing-, for instance, in your own personal notes on pronunciation?
It can be used to represent very close to every sound fairly precisely, although people usually throw away the precision in favor of simple letter forms. At its best (from a pronunciation point of view), it is essentially a phonetic description. I've found explicit instruction on how to place my tongue to make certain sounds extremely valuable in the past, and IPA is yet another way to provide that. It doesn't replace listening, but it can be vital when, after repeated listening, your attempts to reproduce it sound slightly funny to you, but incredibly strange to native speakers. This isn't a theoretical situation - I've been there with the Dutch 'g', among other sounds. After you're doing almost the right thing, via a phonetic description, adjusting the sound to match a native speakers, ie via shadowing, becomes amazingly easier. Edited by Volte on 16 January 2008 at 1:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 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 68 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
[θ] voiceless dental fricative, as in English thing [ð] voiced dental fricative, as in English that (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fricative_consonant) Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 16 January 2008 at 1:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 69 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Which just goes to show that no system can save people from bad teaching. That sounds like a perfectly good way to describe things to linguists or perhaps during training for people who want to teach languages, and an absolutely useless thing to teach most students who aren't already familiar with IPA vowels. 2 persons have 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 70 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, I do.
That would be true if there had been one type of 'th' only. But there are two, and both are in spelling just "th". When you make notes it may be useful to mark somehow which 'th' is in this particular word. One of the ways you can mark it is by using the IPA symbol.
For some sounds it's not that easy. Learning a new sound is not only learning how to pronounce it but also: where to pronounce it (in which words) and how to recognize it when we hear it. When I've already learn how to place my tongue to pronounce a new sound it doesn't necessarily mean I'll be able to use it properly. Let's assume I've just heard a new word and it seems like it contains this particular new sound. I'm not completely sure, though as in my target language there are more sounds that appear to be very similar to this one. In this case I can always check the transcription in a dictionary and mark it in my notes.
I don't consider it as a problem. But I don't expect IPA to "represent all the sounds in all languages accurately". For me IPA is just a simplified graphical representation of pronunciation. It could be another system instead of IPA. The important thing is that different (when it's relevant for the meaning) sounds within one language are marked with use of different graphic signs. 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 71 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Actually, I found her explanation very useful. I understood the diagram but then I wondered what those IPA symbols were there for. They failed to represent the sound she was trying to describe, and they just confused me. I am not sure if the following analogy can describe my point. Imagine you want to learn to drive. You would probably need to find a driving instructor. But some salesperson come to you and present you with an expensive training course. You will learn to drive, do a hand-break-turn, change engine oil, fix the engine, as well as some bodyshop skills. You explain to the salesman that the course is an overkill. But he keeps telling you that a subset of it is useful to you. Many of his clients can testify that the course is useful, even though some only attended part of the course. 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 72 of 94 16 January 2008 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Ok, you guys are picking on my wordings. Let me rephrase: In your example, after I learn how to pronounce 'th' by putting my tongue between my teeth, shape my mouth correctly, blow in the correct amount of air, and vibrate my vocal cord at the right time, I will know it thereafter. I don't need to know what 'theta' in IPA is. Correct? Edited by edwin on 16 January 2008 at 1:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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