willaniu
Does the native English speaker learn phonetic symbol in primary school? 英语为母语的人是不是也学习音标?if not, how do you pronouce a new word?We study Chinese pinyin, this help us to read new words by ourself. I mean if one master pinyin, you could look up the dictionary and you could know how to read. I want to add a question, do you never learn phonetic symbol ? I am curious abou this question because Istudied it when i begin to learn English at school.
Oct 19, 2010 1:38 PM
Answers · 4
2
We don't learn it. To pronounce new words, we do few different things. We "sound out" new words based on the sounds we already know. If you know how to pronounce "time," you can sound out "lime." And for word parts that don't have a good sight-sound match, like the -ture sound in "picture /cher/," we memorize those word parts. We learn how to use a pronunciation key in the dictionary. The idea is to match the spelling of a new word to the sound of a word you already know (an easy word). symptom: y = the /i/ of him syne: y = the /i/ of time But we really don't memorize the phonetic alphabet. In fact, each dictionary can have its own variation of phonetic spellings, so memorizing one doesn't really help. And we probably learn how to pronounce a huge number of words simply by asking someone who knows. And because English spelling is so much fun, teachers like to give regular spelling quizzes and hold spelling contests. I used to love those, but for some reason I still ended up being a bad speller. : )
October 19, 2010
2
No, we do not study phonetic symbols in primary school. To answer your question, how did you learn to pronounce new words in Chinese?
October 19, 2010
No the people in the USA know nothing about the phonetic symbols. Most of them. I heard that the Chinese people from different regions of the country have the same written language and pronounce the hierogliphs so differently that they can't often understand one another. And if you write something - the man or the girl understands everything as their own. So like Crocodile Dundee's accent for the Americans is nothing compared to the real situation in China.
October 20, 2010
No the people in the USA know nothing about the phonetic symbols. Most of them. I heard that the Chinese people from different regions of the country have the same written language and pronounce the hierogliphs so differently that they can't often understand one another. And if you write something - the man or the girl understands everything as their own. So like Crocodile Dundee's accent for the Americans is nothing compared to the real situation in China.
October 20, 2010
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