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Interactive IPA Chart

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Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#101

Post by dvirsky »

leephillips wrote: post #88
ff7c11 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're identical.

They are identical. I think he was making a distinction between {week, weak} on one hand and {wick} on the other (but I was also initially confused by the way he put it). This is a big hurdle for native Spanish speakers as well, because i in Spanish is always pronounced as "ee". There seem to be a lot of embarrassing word pairs around these vowels; sheet, beach, etc.

Yeah what I meant is that it just increases the possibilities of awkwardness. Piss of cake, piss process, etc.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#102

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #41
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complex. Spanish phonology dictates a denti-alveolar pronunciation of /t/, while typical English phonology (USA, England, etc.) uses purely alveolar /t/. So in Spanish, the tip of the tongue hits the back of the teeth, which doesn't happen in English. This distinction is not rendered in the IPA glyphs or any diacritic that I'm aware of.

Is it not the t̪? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_consonant

I think it's not perfect, because (I believe) Spanish /t/ is usually denti-alveolar and not fully dental. I don't think there's a way to express that specific aspect of it, though I'm also not a linguist so I may be mistaken!

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#103

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

leephillips wrote: post #55
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more complex. Spanish phonology dictates a denti-alveolar pronunciation of /t/, while typical English phonology (USA, England, etc.) uses purely alveolar /t/. So in Spanish, the tip of the tongue hits the back of the teeth, which doesn't happen in English. This distinction is not rendered in the IPA glyphs or any diacritic that I'm aware of.

That’s what I’m talking about. The Spanish t is almost like an unaspirated English th.

Aspiration is a separate phenomenon. English also has unaspirated plosives — they just mostly only occur in word-final positions, like the in "pat", and they are not contrastive with their aspirated versions.

What I was talking about was how the Spanish /t/ has the tip of the tongue just a bit further forward, so that it touches the back of your teeth. English /t/ is, for most people, purely alveolar, so there's no teeth contact.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#104

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #37
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not capture, for example, the difference between the English and Spanish t Ah yeah, that's true. This is because most Spanish speakers pronounce /t/ as denti-alveolar (the tip of the tongue touches the back of the teeth) while most English speakers pronounce /t/ as purely alveolar (the tip of the tongue stops at the back of the alveolar ridge). I'm not sure why the IPA chart doesn't differentiate these spec…

> I'm not sure why the IPA chart doesn't differentiate these specific phones, honestly. I imagine it's because although the sounds are very different cross-linguistically, maybe there aren't any languages where these phones are contrastive and thus they don't warrant separate glyphs in the IPA. Still, I'd love to see them! It's because sounds vary continuously, but the IPA is by necessity discrete. (A problem that is…

Wow, that's really interesting about the affricates! Thanks for sharing! :)

I get the continuous vs discrete aspect for sure, but you'd think we'd at least have different symbols for each place of articulation! /t/ crosses four different places (dental, denti-alveolar, alveolar, post-alveolar) and the best we can do is cut that down into two groups of two places with the dental diacritic which says "some teeth contact". I think if I were to design such a transcription system from scratch, I would try to make it at least possible to express each place/manner combination, but that's just me!

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#105

Post by hunter2_ »

danielheath wrote: post #84
ff7c11 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're identical.

I’m sure, in many accents, that they are. Definitely not the same in Australian Strine.

As an American, I knew about Straya but this is the first I've heard of Strine. Or should I say Murican :)

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#106

Post by leephillips »

DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #103
leephillips wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I’m talking about. The Spanish t is almost like an unaspirated English th.

Aspiration is a separate phenomenon. English also has unaspirated plosives — they just mostly only occur in word-final positions, like the in "pat", and they are not contrastive with their aspirated versions. What I was talking about was how the Spanish /t/ has the tip of the tongue just a bit further forward, so that it touches the back of your teeth. English /t/ is, for most people, purely alveolar, so there's no t…

Agreed. But some Spanish speakers pronounce t with the tongue quite far forward, between the teeth; that’s what I meant by comparing it to an unaspirated English th. But I think we are getting into regional variations now.

It’s even more crucial with d. An English native speaker who is a beginner in Spanish will pronounce tened in a way that will be interpreted by Spanish speakers as tener.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#107

Post by hunter2_ »

gizmo686 wrote: post #62
StavrosK wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you post his name? I don't understand how it would be so hard to hear, hopefully he wouldn't mind.

Gesoel /ʒɛʒuɛl/ (Going off of memory here, I probably butchered the pronunciation anyway). /ʒ/ does not occur in word-initial position in English, and for whatever reason it was incredibly hard for me to perceive it there. There was probably other more subtle differences between the two that did not make it into the transcription (e.g., his native name was pronounced with his native accent instead of his English acce…

> /ʒ/ does not occur in word-initial position in English

I never noticed that until now. While it's obviously not an English word, plenty of English speakers have discussed French explorer Jacques Cousteau. I can't think of any other examples.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#108

Post by trhaynes »

ithkuil wrote: post #39
ardit33 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beer yo.... I was 'hopping' for that too.....

But what would you need an interactive chart of IPA beer for?

At least 4 different types of hops that can be mixed in different ratios, at different times during brewing, etc.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#110

Post by dfcowell »

xkjkls wrote: post #89
idlewords wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to represent speech in writing is still pretty useful, even in 2021!

Is it? I mean, like I would never want to invest the time to actually learning how to decipher it. It doesn't seem worth the effort when there are audio ways to convey the information.

The difference is that the IPA tells you how to use your anatomy to create the right sound. Someone with the right knowledge can look at a word in IPA and know how to construct it to get an accurate reproduction.

You might be able to hear an unfamiliar word and try to reproduce it, but in a lot of cases you will only get, at best, a rough approximation unless you also know how to shape your tongue, where the sounds come from and what the accent is.

English is a very forgiving language, generally speaking, but highly tonal languages (like Vietnamese and Mandarin) won’t let you get away with simple mimicry, at least not without a lot of work to nail the pronunciation.

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