Carlos
Let's discuss about the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)

Since yesterday and due to the fact that my English pronounciation is pretty bad, I am trying to improve it. I have found many people who recommend the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) but I have never studied it, even when I was a child at the school. I dont know if it is profitable to work on it now or it is better to focus the efforts in listening a lot of English audios...

On the other hand, there is a many languages like the mine (Spanish) where each letter represents only a sound so I guess, due to the fact that it is simplier, that the English trend is to take only one sound for letter and lose the others. What do you think about that?

22 de ago de 2018 09:35
Comentários · 7
2
The IPA chart it is useuful. Sometimes when hearing a different language we tend to adapt thw sound to one we have on our mother tongue, and that can lead us to spend our while thinking that we "know" how to pronounce a word when we actually do not.




22 de agosto de 2018
2

The IPA is a tool.  It lets a linguist transcribe the speech sounds of a language or a dialect or a specific person.  It lets dictionary writers give the pronunciation of a word in a uniform, unambigous manner.

For an English language learner, knowing the IPA is not required, but knowing it can be helpful:

English has more sounds (42-44 sounds depending the dialect) than Spanish (usually listed as about 33-35 sounds depending on the dialect).  A Spanish speaker will have trouble accurately hearing and speaking English sounds that don't exist in Spanish if the Spanish speaker mentally represents the sound using Spanish sounds.  With IPA, the language learner has a name/symbol for each English sound.

For example, Spanish has five vowels: [i][e][a][o][u].  My Canadian dialect has eleven vowels: [i][ɪ][e][ɛ][æ][ɑ][ʌ][o][ʊ][u][ə].

With pronunciation lessons, a language learner masters the sounds of English, especially the sounds that don't exist in their own language, and then their listening and speaking are much better.  IPA is not required, but it can be helpful.




22 de agosto de 2018
1

Carlos, el IPA es como cualquier herramienta: Úsala solo para lo necesario. Yo la usé cuando estudié la pronunciación del Mandarín, pero ya la he olvidado. Te recomiendo ver los videos de English Pronunciation de Fluent Forever. Incluso acaban de lanzar un "Pronunciation Trainer" de Inglés para hispanohablantes. O sea, un Anki deck que te permite entrenar tu oído para detectar las diferencias entre los sonidos del inglés y los del español. Aquí está:

https://fluent-forever.com/product/fluent-forever-pronunciation-trainer/

El que buscas es la última opción de la lista.

22 de agosto de 2018
1
The IPA chart it is useuful. Sometimes when hearing a different language we tend to adapt the sound to one we have on our mother tongue, and that can lead us to not get better just because we think "know" how to pronounce a word when we actually do not.

Somebody shared this video on a discussion threads about English spelling and I totally recommend you to watch it. It might change your mind on the idea that the words should me "pronounced as they are spelled".
https://youtu.be/A8zWWp0akUU

22 de agosto de 2018
1

By the way, I would love to try reverse mimicry with a student on an experimental basis in a free session. I speak enough Spanish to do this with you. Let me know if you'd be interested. See http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Hilton-AccentReduction.html Also look up YouTube demos.

Hopefully, Teacher Phil will also contribute to this discussion when the western hemisphere wakes up.

22 de agosto de 2018
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