Introduction to International Phonetic Alphabet

Introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

• I think I have learned the pronunciation of English, Chinese, and Japanese to some extent.

  • (I really don’t understand the pronunciation of Chinese)
  • So, it seems good to learn based on that.

• For now, I want to grasp the overall picture.

  • 【Phonetics】Explanation of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) with concrete examples | Spice of English Grammar
  • 
    • I see.
    • It’s interesting that vowel and consonant can be represented by combining these two elements (blu3mo)(blu3mo)(blu3mo).
  • You can also express accents.
  • The concept of suprasegmental elements is interesting.
  • With the use of diacritics, you can express the subtle differences between various languages.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe3EmiFWgGM

  • Oh, I didn’t know there were various vowels.
    • It seems useful for Pronunciation Correction.
  • The details mentioned here seem important.
    • For example, even though /e/ sounds like the Japanese “e,” it’s more like e->a.
      • It’s interesting that the ea in bread and the e in bed have the same symbol.
  • Things that caught my attention:
    • I was surprised that the light l and dark l are not distinguished in the pronunciation symbols.
      • Why aren’t they distinguished even though the sounds are different?
      • There must be a limit to absorbing subtle differences, so maybe there is a need for Finiteization at some point.
    • Are the vowels and consonants mentioned here only used in English?
      • For example, it seems that the sh sound in Chinese cannot be represented by the consonants in this video.
  • As for my English pronunciation challenges:
    • I don’t think I can properly distinguish s and th.
      • I think I do it naturally to some extent, but the distinction is vague.
    • There are cases where the vowels are different from what I expected.
      • I guess I have to fix them on a case-by-case basis.

• http://user.keio.ac.jp/~kawahara/pdf/IPA_booklet_distribution.pdf

  • In the IPA, consonants are defined by three basic elements: place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.

  • The place of articulation refers to where in the mouth the sound is produced, the manner of articulation refers to how the mouth is used to produce the sound, and voicing refers to whether the vocal cords vibrate.

  • However, as explained in section 04, even the place of articulation includes “bilabial plosive, dental plosive, alveolar plosive, post-alveolar fricative, retroflex fricative, velar plosive, uvular plosive, velar nasal, pharyngeal fricative, glottal fricative,” and it would be a burden for those who are trying to learn speech science or phonetics in the future to memorize all of these.

    • I see? (blu3mo)
    • I felt like it would be better to just memorize that much, but maybe it’s difficult.
  • 

  • It can be argued that the classification system currently used in the IPA is not “absolutely” correct.

    • The consonant “shi” is an exception. Seriously? (blu3mo)

  • Many sounds in the world’s languages are produced using the airstream from the lungs. These sounds are called “pulmonic consonants” in phonetics. It is safe to consider all vowels as pulmonic consonants. However, not all consonants are pulmonic consonants.

    • Is it like the one that looks like 6 in “other symbols”?

  • Human speech is influenced by various factors such as the person producing the speech, the situation, and the context. For example, the “a” pronounced by a man is not the same as the “a” pronounced by a woman, and the “a” pronounced by an adult is quite different from the “a” pronounced by a child, to the point where they can be considered “physically different.”

    • Oh, that’s interesting (blu3mo)(blu3mo)
    • I wonder if this is how we distinguish “manly voice” and “childish voice.”- How can I memorize the conversion between characters and IPA?
  • You could try using extensions that replace English with phonetic symbols and read them. This way, you can memorize the conversion between alphabets and IPA.
  • Even if it’s not a one-to-one correspondence, I think there is some general correspondence between alphabets and IPA. So it would be good to learn it based on a large amount of data.
  • Would it also be useful to learn Japanese to IPA conversion?

• https://eigonokai.jp/phonetics/2-国際音声記号とは%EF%BC%9F/

• As of 20230127, I want to continue memorizing IPA.

  • Should I learn English IPA, Japanese IPA, and Chinese IPA separately?
    • If I know what is used in these languages, I can cover most of the chart.
  • Once I can do that, should I fill in the empty spaces on the chart?
    • It probably won’t be that difficult.
    • Since it’s a chart, theoretically I should be able to infer the missing sounds based on the known sounds in both the vertical and horizontal directions.

• https://linkingphonetics.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/cambridge_p_roach_english_phonetics_and_phonology_nopw.pdf

  • An important purpose of the course is to explain how English is pronounced in the accent normally chosen as the standard for people learning the English spoken in England. If this was the only thing the course did, a more suitable title would have been “English Pronunciation”. However, at the compara-tivelv advanced level at which this course is aimed it is usual to present this information in the context of a general theory about speech sounds and how they are used in language; this theoretical context is called phonetics and phonology.

  • I see ~ (blu3mo)
  • It’s not just about learning vowels and consonants. Chapters 5 and beyond talk about intonation and accent that span multiple sounds.
  • The standard English in England is called “Receptive Pronunciation” (used by BBC, etc.).

    • There are exceptions to this - you can find accents in parts of Britain that sound American, and accents in America that sound English.

      • I feel like they’re using “English” to mean “English-like” here. It’s a feeling that British English is the true English, haha.
  • If I continue to check English pronunciation with this material, I will become a British English speaker, haha.
    • Well, that’s not a bad thing, right? (blu3mo)

• I have memorized all the English phonetic symbols for now. (blu3mo)

• However, I don’t understand the meaning of the two-dimensional arrangement of sounds in the chart, so I want to understand the meaning of the chart based on what I have memorized.

  • 【音声学】英語の母音の種類/分類、IPAチャートをわかりやすく解説 | 英文法のスパイス

    • Tongue height

      • In this article, we use the criterion of “high and low,” but the official IPA chart uses the criterion of “wide and narrow.”

      • In the case of English, narrow mouth opening = high tongue position, it seems.
        • But in other languages, it’s not necessarily the same.

    • Tongue advancement

      • Whether the mouth is pulled back or not.

    • Lip rounding

      • This one is straightforward.

    • Tenseness of the tongue

      • This is about whether the mouth is tense or not.
    • These four parameters.