#learning ipa

[gaasublarb]

Hobie's Accent Challenge/Practice

I tried to find a sentence with every english phoneme and this came up.

That quick beige fox jumped in the air over each thin dog. Look out, I shout, for he's foiled you again, creating chaos.

So here goes /)////(\ Wish I knew more IPA

Me:

ðat quick bæj fahx jəmpt in ðə ær ohver ɪch thin dahg. Look owt, aɪ showt, for hɪs fohɪld you əgin, crɪæding kæahss

Hobie:

Tha' quick bæj fox jəmpt en ðə eh ohvə ɪch thin dog. Look ow', ah show', foh 'ɪs foɪld yə əgen, crɪæ'en kayohss

[stackofsnakes]

Whenever there's a "do you pronounce it x or y" post they never use the IPA and it irks me. Now, i know why they don't use the IPA but it still irks me. I mean, why did i even learn it? Why did people put in the time and money to create it when it's not used for its most applicable mainstream use? Why do you insist on leveragin the relationship between english its outdated, unrevised written representation to create a sort of ad hoc phonetic spelling system when there's a perfectly good one right there? You're clanking rocks against each other in the hope one might gain a sharp edge like some sort of neolithic proto-toolsmith while there's a tool box waiting for you in your garage.

[jimpagne]

do you have any tips on sounding more like a native? i feel like i sound dumb with my accent :/

I have an answer. It's a very stupid answer, but it worked for me.

My accent is one of the things I get complimented on the most by Korean people that I talk to, many of them assuming I've spent some time in their country or at least studied there once -- neither of which I have done, but I always feel flattered nonetheless by the compliment.

My secret to perfecting an accent? Well, I did something kind of stupid. Basically, I decided to treat Korean phones (aka sounds) like I was a baby learning them for the first time. Babies repeat sounds that they hear, and they do so through babbling or word repetition. So, I would quite literally just "babble" to myself using Korean sounds. It sounds really strange, but it worked very well. Also, if you do long "sentences", you can practice the intonation flow of the languages as well. The following string of Hangul is complete nonsense. Some of these are real words, some of them are not. This is kind of an example of how I would randomly mutter things to myself to try to practice the sounds and intonation 👍

항두하는지, 모려가서 바빴는데, 그게 뭐, 다시 키나고, 파니를 수작겠습니다...

Now I would NEVER try to pass this off as actual Korean, I know some people say random things to try to convince people that they speak a language, but this is not what I'm doing here! I would just do this to myself at home or during long commutes. This way you're not really exhausting your brain trying to work on phones and sentence structures at the same time. It's just a silly way to use Korean sounds without stressing your mind out too much.

Also, since you're by yourself, it's a judgement free zone. Some people are nervous about speaking in front of people, so you can practice this in the comfort of your own bedroom.

But yes, that was one of my main ways of practicing.

However, my other main way was super normal... it's actually probably how most people practice their accent. Sometimes I would turn on a K-drama or a Korean YouTube video and just listen to them talk and then repeat what they said. Just do that for like an hour, and you'll be surprised by just how much your accent can improve in that short amount of time.

Actually, before I would do recording assignments, I would watch one episode of a K-drama before doing it, because my recording before watching the K-drama and after watching the K-drama was noticeably different.

You just need hear Korean people speaking!

[salvadorbonaparte]

I'm considering giving my students a five minute crash course into phonetics and phonology and the IPA because I feel like if you even have just a basic understanding of manner and place of articulation, especially for vowels, it makes language learning a bit easier.

[skymantle]

noticed a while ago that yes man has a small lisp that's noticeable in a handful of his lines, so i made a little compilation of the ones where its Most apparent! :-)

[nintendont2502]

i love seeing any poll on pronunciation that uses the pronunciation of other words as reference. tumblr users learn what accents are challenge /lh

[msburgundy]

my beef with ipa comes down to the fact that i simply do not like, conceptually, that there is a contrived writing system intended to capture every single sound in human language. i would much rather just mix scripts (like throwing a fully english word into a korean sentence and vice versa) i UNDERSTAND why we don't (thus i can forgive romanization etc [to a degree]) and i also understand why in academic contexts such a writing system is quite valuable.

in actual life, however, there is simply no need to represent all those sounds, and you're simply better off learning the native scripts of languages whose influence you encounter frequently

[cosmogyros]

Can we please make it illegal to put the phrase "'a' as in 'father'" in any language-learning textbook ever again? That is close to being the worst POSSIBLE word to phonetically represent the sound intended.

[noctude]

i don’t know. i don’t know what to tell you

[lurkingteapot]

When I say I wish popular romanisations of Thai were less ambiguous and more consistent, it's stuff like this:

Phupha and Pat (and Pa!) have the same initial consonant sound. Pran's is different—it's the same as Kampung's "p" sound. Pran, Pa, and Phupha share an "a" sound though—the same "a" sound Kampung also has (though it's written differently (*)). Kampung's "u" sound and Phupha's "u" sound are not the same. Kampung's "p" is the same sound as the initial in Pran. Kampung and Korn share an initial. It's the same sound the names Gunn (MSP) and Gun (Atthaphan) and Kan (KPTS) start with. All three of those names are pronounced identically. Kan (KPTS) is not pronounced the same as Kan (The Eclipse). Tian does not share an initial with Toto, but Toto (BBS) and Tinn (MSP) do. If the romanisation of BBS given names and ATOTS place names were consistent, we'd have Phut and Pha and Pran (or Pa Pan Dao). (Pa the person and Pha the word for cliff do not sound the same because of tones, but that's another topic.) I could go on.

And all this is just based on consonants and vowel quality and lengths, not even going into different glyphs for the same consonant. I don't have a solution to offer for this. I 100% think authors or subtitling teams (or, y'know, REGULAR PEOPLE who just want folks who don't speak Thai to be able to put their name in writing) choosing a romanisation that looks good to them is valid. But I'm also a language nerd, so I can't quite stop thinking how much harder this makes it for folks trying to learn more about the language, or pick up more about it, either.

(Name examples and corresponding official romanisation taken from real life, A Tale of Thousand Stars, Bad Buddy Series, KinnPorsche The Series, My School President, and Our Skyy 2)

(*) Edited 2023-06-16 to add: this was a mistake stemming from too many unchecked edits and I'm sorry. Kampung's "a" is neither long nor short whereas Pran, Pa, and Phupha have long "a" sounds and Pat has a short one.

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

"my education is my highest priority" everything returns to vocaloid

[triviallytrue]

"my linguist gf" had me thinking "oh i didn't know triv and max are dating" as if the only linguist in the world is max. i think i need to log off

@max1461

[thedaily-beer]

Mother Earth Higher Learning Hazy IPA (Picked up at Windmill Farms). A 3 of 4. Very interesting tropical profile on this with coconut, stone fruit, and lots of other tropical fruit. The body tastes slightly sweeter and fruity, and has a slight thickness to it.

[xx3m0j1nxx]

as someone who had to learn phonetics and ipa during acting class i LOVE whenever phil talks about his education

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

Celebrating a HRT milestone by analysing which symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet I would like to fuck

[haxyr3]

Thanks to everyone who voted and helped me decide on IPA. As you can see, almost 3/4 voted in favor of IPA in the vocabulary posts. I am very pleased to see that the term IPA is familiar to almost everyone who reads my blog.

As some of you rightly pointed out in the comments, Latinization of Russian words would only work for speakers of a particular language (e.g. English), while IPA is equally understandable for everyone.

Let's help those who don't know IPA yet! What resources would you recommend for learning IPA? I did a bit of googling, but Google only showed me sites about Irish Pale Ale. I don't know what Google thinks of me ;)