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Struggling with IPA | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| crmaximo Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4257 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 1 of 7 11 November 2012 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi!
I am new here, and I am trying to learn French from the scratch. I began with the famous (and not so loved) Pimsleur course, as in the gym I need something that must be audio only. My concern is with pronunciation. Even with a lot of repetition, remains a doubt about how to speak a word or a phrase correctly. So I come with IPA (http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab. htm) and I am trying to use it. And there begin my question. How can I use it? Sometimes I try to listen a sound but have no Idea how to reproduce it. Do you have any clue of where I can get more information about this chart (how sounds are formed, what is a plosive alveolar sound, or what are these kind of sounds, etc). I also would like to know if there is a place where I can find words in English (US) being used as example of IPA chart? My next step is reading Wikipedia articles (like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundedness), but I am not sure that Wikipedia is the most recommended source of information. Thanks in advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 7 11 November 2012 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Buy "A Practical Introduction to Phonetics" by J. C. Catford. It's the best book on the topic I've seen.
Many English dictionaries, such as dictionary.reference.com, have IPA for English words. There are also specific French pronunciation courses which use IPA and are occasionally discussed on this forum. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5343 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 7 11 November 2012 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some resources which I found very helpful:
French phonology on Wikipedia Interactive IPA charts Don't hesitate to use Wikipedia. It's pretty trustworthy on these subjects, though it's often way too detailed. For an American English speaker, the following sounds are usually the trickiest: - The French R. - The front rounded vowels. - The nasal vowels. I took a look at the Wikipedia article on Portuguese phonology, and it looks like Brazilian Portuguese speakers will need to work on pretty much the same sounds as an English speaker. To learn how to make individual sounds, you can always search YouTube, which apparently has over 224,000 videos for people learning French. But IPA by itself won't be enough. Basically, IPA signs are only approximations of the actual sound. Specifically, IPA vowels are just arbitrary markers in a multi-dimensional space (front/back, open/closed, rounded/unrounded, tense/lax), and dictionaries just pick whichever IPA symbol is closest to the actual sound. As for IPA consonants, they usually omit useful details like whether or not "t" is aspirated. The theory is that you already know what sounds are in a language, and that you just use the IPA to help figure out which sound is actually used in a given word. Also, an important warning: You can't learn French pronunciation from a book. There's too many new vowel sounds, silent letters and liaison rules, and if you try to memorize them all, you may find it a bit overwhelming. At least for me, the easiest approach was to spend a lot of time listening to French, and reading along with a matching text. (Good sources for this are Assimil and listening/reading, or subs2srs at the intermediate level.) After a few months of practice, you can pretty much look at a French word and know how it's pronounced 95% of time. The remaining 5% of the time you'll be off by a single vowel or consonant. (Also, if you just happen to love rap, and want to spend lots of time doing fairly hard-core pronunciation work, I should mention The Flow of French. It costs money, and there are a couple of mistakes here and there, but the author is a dedicated musician and he spends a ton of time obsessing about pronunciation. The idea is that you work through his online pronunciation and singing exercises, and you submit recordings online at the end of each lesson. You then get feedback telling you that a particular sound isn't round enough, or that it's too lax, or that your French R is completely wrong. He uses IPA heavily. But you'll spend at least as much time practicing rhythm as you spend practicing French, so be warned.) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 7 11 November 2012 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forum, crmaximo! Perhaps you could look at the IPA from a Portuguese base instead of an English base to help clear up your confusion: Portuguese Wikipedia article Alfabeto fonético internacional
Video aula do alfabeto fonético internacional em capítulos Edited by iguanamon on 12 November 2012 at 1:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4510 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 5 of 7 11 November 2012 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
That's not necessarily wrong though. If you are unsure which one of two sounds you hear, it usually means that it's actually neither. Audio-only courses are important, because if you know what to expect, you will hear what you think you're supposed to hear, instead of what is really there. Languages have more sounds than they have phonemes, so don't try to divide everything you hear into the few sounds you may find in your textbook. It would be very difficult to systematically learn all the sounds, but if you keep listening and learning new words, you will develop an ear for what sounds right. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6250 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 7 11 November 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Emk is right about stepping back and listening carefully, not just relying on IPA.
Back to IPA, phonetically transcribing what you're hearing can be a rather valuable exercise in knowing whether you're correctly distinguishing sounds, once you've got the mechanics of transcription down. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| crmaximo Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4257 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 7 of 7 17 November 2012 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Guys, you are great. I should answer each one individually, but the forum would classify me as a spammer (I’ve tried today and it didn’t work very well :(
Volte, thanks for the tips. I think that in long term I would benefit a lot in knowing IPA and how sounds are formed. But, as you said, EMK is right. EMK, thanks for the reply. I am learning a lot from you (I read your topic on C1 listening and I will try it as soon as I am in an intermediate level). About IPA, I think you are twice right. First, I can learn a lot of how it work comparing English and Portuguese phonology. I should have done this for English a long time ago. Second, I must use IPA as a tool for some specific situations, and not for having it as the true guide in French pronunciation. Although it wasn’t not my idea, is quite useful have it plain before I start. As LaughingChimp also said, I can’t reduce everything in the few sound available in a book. Iguanmo, thanks for the answer. I don’t like using Portuguese Wikipedia texts for themes that are not Brazilian nor Portuguese because, unfortunately, they are only poor translation of English texts. So, I prefer read English Wikipedia directly. Thanks again. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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