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Interactive IPA Chart

ipachart.com

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Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#181

Post by herewulf »

novaleaf wrote: post #178

I'm not a linguist, but I think they could have done better with the Plosive "P" sound. It's too close to the "B". In Standard American English the P is more obvious than this.

The top of the page states that /p,t,k/ are non-aspirated. These sounds are always aspirated in English when word initial (in most if not all varieties of English). That means that the only difference between /p/ and /b/ here is vocal chord vibration of the latter, which is not what you expect to hear word initial as a "Standard American English" speaker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#182

Post by herewulf »

lokedhs wrote: post #170

Very nice chart. It really helps when understanding IPA. I was trying to find the Swedish "u" sound. According to the Swedish Wikipedia page on the sound, it says it's written as "u" in IPA, but it doesn't sound right at all. The "ʉ" sound is a lot closer, but still not right. What is the correct IPA representation of the Swedish u, as in "ful"?

Edit: The Wikipedia phonology article says it's /ʉ/ However, I stand by the fact that the IPA symbols do not always reflect exactly what a speaker produces, so you may be picking up on that (or the speaker in the IPA chart recording isn't quite capable of producing the requisite sound as it's probably not in his native inventory).

IIRC, Swedish /u/ is somewhat fronted, but not quite /ʉ/. It's somewhere inbetween those two. There isn't an IPA symbol for every possible sound, just the most common among languages, but there are diacritics for special cases or more precision.

See the "Advanced" diacritic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...

The diacritics are also used for _phonetic_ rather than _phonemic_ renderings as the surrounding sounds in a word, etc. affect the exact outcome of an individual sound. Phonemic renderings in the IPA are typically enclosed in slashes and phonetic in square brackets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#183

Post by herewulf »

bradrn wrote: post #174
lokedhs wrote: post #170

Very nice chart. It really helps when understanding IPA. I was trying to find the Swedish "u" sound. According to the Swedish Wikipedia page on the sound, it says it's written as "u" in IPA, but it doesn't sound right at all. The "ʉ" sound is a lot closer, but still not right. What is the correct IPA representation of the Swedish u, as in "ful"?

I don’t speak Swedish, but I found a sketch grammar (Andersson’s) which says that it’s [y]. Not sure if that’s correct or not though.

Unsurprisingly there's some regional variation. Wikipedia says "Central Standard Swedish /ʉː/ is near-close near-front [ʏː]." Note that [y] and [ʏː] are not the same, but very close. Fascinating!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#184

Post by herewulf »

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 IPA is invaluable for studying human language, not just _a_ language. I.e.: For linguists.

For individuals wishing to learn a foreign language, the IPA probably isn't super helpful. Your mind needs to learn to pick up on new sounds if you are going to be able to converse anyway and you should definitely learn your target language's orthography to be a proficient reader/writer.

That said, I enjoy learning languages in addition to studying (comparing, contrasting, etc) and have found the IPA helpful to give me a leg up on that. Therefore, I recommend the IPA for polyglots and linguists.

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