Hi everybody...I haven't used IPA ( International Phonetic Alphabet ) and also I don't know about IPA...There are some symbols in IPA but I'm not familiar with them even in dictionaries...I used google translate for knowing the pronunciation...And I think if I hear it works better for sticking in my mind...Is it necessary to know IPA? What wrongs will happen if I don't know them and I only use online pronunciation such as google translate?
Thanks
In my opinion, learning the IPA and studying phonetics in general is a good idea for anyone interested in studying languages that are very different from one's own. Studying phonetics allows you to more deeply and accurately understand how native speakers make the sounds of their language. Without this information, it is very possible you might mistakenly think that a sound is made in a way that is more similar to your own language than it actually is.
In your case, as a Persian speaker who is learning English, Chinese, and Arabic, the IPA will certainly help you with perfecting your English pronunciation, and with identifying the sounds of Chinese. I'm not sure how similar Persian and Arabic are in terms of sound, but being familiar with phonetics would allow you to precisely see where the differences are, even if the differences are very small.
I just started learning more about phonetics myself when I started learning Chinese recently. I'm using the book "The Sounds of Chinese" (ISBN: 978-0521603980), and it has helped tremendously in learning proper Chinese pronunciation. As someone who neglected learning phonetics for many years, I highly recommend taking some time to study this topic seriously. Find yourself a good book that isn't too technical on the topic (the one I mentioned is great, but it's Chinese-focused), and I think you'll learn a lot~
One of the nice things about knowing the IPA is learning which sounds are in the new language that are exactly the same phoneme (pronounced exactly the same) and which are very slightly different. In Spanish, for example, the t sound and the d sound are similar to English, but are not exactly the same, so they have a slightly different sound. Non-native speakers often substitute a very similar sound for the sound in the new language, and I think that if you are not careful, you may not even be aware that the sound should be pronounced differently. Learning the IPA symbols in your native language and your target language can actually help you hear the sounds and become more aware of the differences. This knowledge can give you a focus for the sounds that you need to learn and polish, as opposed to which ones you should not need to focus on.
You still might end up using Google translate on a more routine basis. Knowing the IPA would not mean you have to drastically change how you like to learn. It just gives you an additional tool.
Susan is this sound represented with a symbol different than /d/ in the media you use for learning Spanish?
And if so - which one and where do you see it?
I'm asking because it is a weakness of relying on IPA: Spanish phoneme is often represented with /d/ ([d] and [ð̞] being the allophones - different realisations of what is thought to be the same phoneme in different words). Besides what I hear in Spanish is mostly desn't sound like English [ð] as in 'the' either (depends on the dialect may be?).
This [ ˕ ] symbol below ð̞ is used to distinguish it from English ð, but as you see it doesn't even works properly here! I don't think it is much used in textbooks. Similarly, English d often is not the same as Russian, but it isn't captured in the 'broad' phonemic transcription.
From my perspective, IPA is essential when learning English, and it helps tremendously.
And that's because there is no correlation whatsoever between the letters and the way they are pronounced depending on the words into which they are spelled.
Whenever I learn a new word, I also learn its IPA.
I used to talk with a native English speaker from America who told me that even some Americans avail themselves of the IPA when they come across words they've never seen before.
- it doesn't need much time... almost any time to familiarize with sings used for a single language:) It is NOT a thing you need to 'learn'.
- how would you read texts that discuss sounds using IPA?:-/ E.g. a text about cot-caught merger in some English accents?
- Let [ɹ] be the symbol to represent English kind of r, and [æ] for a as in 'man'. Is knowlege of these twop ANY different form knowlege of two words? Well, you don't know what is ɹ and you don't know what is 'alveolar approximant' either. May be indeed, you don't need to know this.
- But if you end up reading books, Wikipedia articles and people's comments here and skipping these, because you don't know what they mean... Possibly you just too lazy to look up the symbol 1 or 2 times.
- how would you discuss differences in pronunciation of the same word in different parts of Iran? Well, there are other ways.
- sometimes transcription (especially - more precise, 'narrow' IPA transcription) draws your attention to a peculiarity of prununciation you might not have noticed otherwise.
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Conclusion: It is too simple a thing:) You need it the very moment you need it, and there is no reason not to learn a symbol when you come across one.
