People won’t believe you when you say how little time you’ve spent learning their language. You’ll pronounce things much better than your fellow learners. Once you’re confident with IPA, insights like this will leap off the page at you. Then they wonder why no-one ever mistakes them for a German. Even if their German is great, they still pronounce euch with the English /ɔɪ/ vowel. Most English speakers don’t realise this. This is wrong! Study IPA, and you’ll realise that the English sound is /ɔɪ/ while German uses the subtly different /ɔʏ/. Remember euch? Most German textbooks will tell you that the “eu” vowel is like the “oi” in English words like “choice”. (That’s the English “r” and “th”.) So if I don’t want to sound like an Engländer, I must ensure that /ɹ/ and /θ/ never come out of my mouth. I also see that German doesn’t contain certain English sounds like /ɹ/ and /θ/. I’ll know I have to practice these and take extra care to get them right. Immediately, I see a few that aren’t in my native English, like /ç/, /œ/ /ø/, and /y/. It tells me that Standard German contains the following sounds: The real power of IPA comes when you use it to learn how to pronounce not just words but entire languages.įor example, if I was starting to learn German (I already speak it, but just for the sake of example), the first thing I’d do would be to look at the Wikipedia page for German IPA. Speak (With Good Pronunciation) From Day One It’s how you learned your native language, after all. This is much more effective than the opposite approach. ![]() This way I ensure that I learn pronunciation first, spelling last. In the early stages of learning a language, I write all my notes in IPA, and avoid the “real” spellings as much as possible. Don’t know how to read that? I’ll get there. If you knew IPA, you could have just looked it up and seen that the correct pronunciation is /ɔʏç/. You: Yes, but I don’t know how to say it! What do you do when you don’t know how to pronounce a word? You could ask a native speaker, but they’re usually terrible at explaining: I hope I can convince you that the answer is “yes”. You may be wondering, “why bother”? Is learning IPA worth the time investment? 3 Good Reasons to Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet So the Spanish is /kome/, while the English is /kʌm/. Slashes/ – or should that be /ˈslæʃɪz/? – mean that the enclosed symbols are IPA.)Īn IPA symbol has the same sound no matter what language you’re writing. ( denote the “correct” spelling of the word(s) in their original language. When you read a word in IPA, you’ll know exactly how to pronounce it.įor example, written in IPA is /wɪnd/ (rhymes with “sinned”) or /waɪnd/ (rhymes with “blind”). Linguists designed IPA to be unambiguous: every symbol has only one pronunciation. Confused yet? And how the hell do you pronounce “العَرَبِيَّة”, “汉语/漢語”, or “ภาษาไทย”?Įnter the International Phonetic Alphabet. In French, cent, sang, sens, sent, s’en and sans all sound the same. The Portuguese sede has two pronunciations with different meanings, as does the German Bucht. But you’ve spent your entire life pronouncing letters like “o” and “e” the English way. ![]() The Spanish word come (“he/she eats”), sounds nothing like the English word with the same spelling. It gets worse when you add more languages into the fray. ![]() English spelling is a terrible guide to pronunciation. Likewise with the words “read”, “live” or “tear”. Like a smooth-talking politician, I’ll reply with a question of my own:ĭoes it rhyme with “blind” (as in “wind-up toy”) or with “sinned” (as in “run like the wind”?) Without more context, you have no idea. You might not have heard of IPA – and no, I’m not talking about India Pale Ale. ![]() What is The International Phonetic Alphabet? Let’s start with the first and most obvious question: I’ll give you an overview of what IPA is, why it’s useful, and what the best way (in my opinion) is to learn it. So this article is my attempt to create the resource that I wish I’d had when I started. Wikipedia has tons of comprehensive information, but can be confusing to a beginner. I taught myself to read the IPA alphabet, but it was tough at first. It’s a powerful tool when learning any language. ?Įvery aspiring polyglot should learn to read the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
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