Comments on: Phonetics

Phonetics

Lezzles — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:29:35 -0800

Phonetics for beginners: play around with phonemes, start with the chart.

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:43:04 -0800

Thanks for this--I'm going to try it with my ESL students.

By: Zero Gravitas

Zero Gravitas — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:04:36 -0800

You simply can't imagine how useful this is to me right now. Thanks a bunch

By: mdonley

mdonley — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:07:46 -0800

Yes! This is awesome, thanks!

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:26:35 -0800

Did anyone else learn to read nonphonetically? Phonics is an utter mystery to me.

By: hjo3

hjo3 — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:31:51 -0800

Did anyone else learn to read nonphonetically?

I thought I had learned to read phonetically... I have dim memories of phonics workbooks from 2nd and 3rd grade. But these symbols are totally unfamiliar to me, so maybe what I learned wasn't "real" phonics.

By: mdonley

mdonley — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:52:36 -0800

For the uninitiated: International Phonetic Alphabet for English

By: MtDewd

MtDewd — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:41:17 -0800

ƆI

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:41:59 -0800

People sometimes use other phonetic systems besides IPA, so it's possible you learned with a different system.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:02:05 -0800

Well, if you want to waste some bullets on Shoot-A-Symbol, forgetting that they want a non-rhotic transcription for "father" is a good start. Brilliant post.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:37:41 -0800

Back when they taught the system to me, we called it "phonics", rather than "phonetics". I've been consciously aware throughout the years of what a great tool it is to have. I fear no new word!

By: Chocomog

Chocomog — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:47:36 -0800

This is great, we're going over language in my Psychology class. We did talk about phonemes, but I don't think it was properly defined. This does it perfectly.

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 04:47:59 -0800

I fear no new word! Precisely. For those of us not majoring in linguistics, a basic understanding of phonetics is a great awareness tool that helps us be better prepared us for all kinds of language learnery. Languages other than your native one, too: even if you only know only ten words of, say, Turkish, if you've paid attention to the phonetics then getting a lot of compliments on how you pronounce them suddenly becomes really easy. :)

By: oaf

oaf — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:45:36 -0800

if you've paid attention to the phonetics then getting a lot of compliments on how you pronounce them suddenly becomes really easy That's really true. It's become a lot easier to poke fun at our neighbors to the north once I learned to say "sɔɹi əbʌuɾ ðæɾ" on cue instead of "sɑɹi əbauɾ ðæɾ".

By: noahpoah

noahpoah — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 05:50:35 -0800

As a professional phonetician, I'm really getting a kick out of these replies. If you like the main post (I don't yet know if I do, but I haven't spent much time with it), you will also like the following web pages, from the late Peter Ladefoged: The IPA chart with futuristic click-and-listen technology. and The contents page for Vowels and Consonants with plenty of cross-language (click-click-click)-click-and-listen fun.

By: kittyprecious

kittyprecious — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:01:58 -0800

...start with the chart. Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! It's British! All the vowels are wrong!

By: bassjump

bassjump — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:33:41 -0800

Fun. Did anyone else learn to read nonphonetically? Yes. Phonetics is something I've always wanted a clue about, but I've had very little exposure to. It's utterly alien to me, but in a fascinating way.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:36:33 -0800

Phone tics? Why would I want that?

By: Peecabu

Peecabu — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:36:33 -0800

I didn't learn to read phonetically either. We had nuns. With rulers. And grammar books. God help the student who stumbled. Reading through fear...but to be fair, everyone was literate. I didn't use Phonics when I taught my son to read, (I didn't use rulers either...for the record), and he reads at about twice his expected level for his age. But, and I'm not sure, we may be discussing two different fields. I'm not terribly familiar with phonics, but it sure seems to me to be a different animal than phonetics.

By: taursir

taursir — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:43:18 -0800

Phonetics is the study of sounds in a language and speech production, and classification of sounds and description thereof. Phonics is just a way of teaching people to read bettar. Both stem from the same Greek root, so it could be confusing. Plus when you add the terms phonology, phone and phoneme it gets a bit confusing for those who haven't seen the terms before. Can I buy another word root? D:

By: Reggie Digest

Reggie Digest — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:22:54 -0800

As a professional Phonecian, I'm really getting a kick out of the great taste of Alpha-Bits.

By: fcummins

fcummins — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:45:15 -0800

How many phoneticians are MeFites? That's 3 with me:)

By: goodnewsfortheinsane

goodnewsfortheinsane — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:52:37 -0800

Hijack: what's a convenient way to type IPA, short of tedious cut-and-paste?

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:01:00 -0800

I never learned anything about phonetics until I trained to teach English as a second language. We had to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet, and although it took me a while to learn the symbols, it was a huge benefit to me. I wish all my ESL students knew the IPA or something similar, because it is much, much easier to teach pronunciation to students who know the symbols. It really annoys me when pronunciation in an ESL textbook or dictionary is written out non-phonetically (for example, pro-nun-see-AY-shun) because it doesn't mean a damn thing to students whose languages don't represent sounds the way we do in English. Knowing the IPA has also made it a lot easier for me to quickly transcribe sounds I hear in other languages, so that I can replicate the proper pronunciation. I had a Polish friend say basic phrases for me in his language and I wrote out the pronunciation for each one using the IPA. It worked beautifully--when I went to Poland I could just read off my piece of paper and at least my pronunciation was somewhat close to correct!

By: greytape

greytape — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:25:40 -0800

Brilliant, thanks.

By: spaceman_spiff

spaceman_spiff — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:38:41 -0800

Goodnewsfortheinsane: depending on what you want to do with it, LaTeX and the textipa/tipa package.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:41:24 -0800

gnfti: If you want the Unicode characters, Wikipedia has a row full of them below every edit box.

By: squarehead

squarehead — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:27:55 -0800

This interactive IPA chart is very useful. I have it bookmarked and return to it whenever I encounter IPA. It is similar to the one noahpoah linked to, but more fluid in execution.