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Interactive IPA Chart

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Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#81

Post by jdmichal »

cjhveal wrote: post #24
lainga wrote: post #5

The 't' and 'd' (dental & postalevolar plosives) sound so close together.

These sounds are really close together to begin with, but in English, we don't actually use either of those sounds in word-initial position like the example recording, and so unless you speak a language that distinguishes these sounds in this context, they are going to be difficult to differentiate. Our word-initial voiceless stops (p, t, k) are actually aspirated stops, that is they are produced with a strong puff o…

Yes! This is known as "voice onset time" and has a lot of variation between languages.

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

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#82

Post by gizmo686 »

StavrosK wrote: post #64
gizmo686 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh aha, that's very interesting thanks! It's amazing how hard it is to parse things that you aren't primed for. I sometimes don't even recognize my native language for a while if I'm in an English-speaking country and hear it out of the blue without context.

I'm giving up my search for it, but I once read a research paper on categorical perception.

If you compare [ta] and [da], you find that the only difference is the time between when you make the consonant, and when your vocal chords start vibrating (voice onset time). In theory, VOT is a contimum, with any value being possible. However, in English it forms a tri-modal distribution /tʰ/ /t/ and /d/. The experiment artificially edited a sound to vary between /t/ and /d/, including with VOTs between the two that do not occur in English. What they found is that people put all of the sounds in 2 boxes, and were unable to distinguish between sounds in the same box, even if their VOT varied considerably.

However, when test subjects were played the same sounds, but told they were listening to rain drops, this effect disapeared, and they were able to distinguish between sounds in the same box.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#83

Post by shazar »

3pt14159 wrote: post #74
shazar wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't week/weak and piece/peace pronounced exactly the same?

They're really quite close, both pairs of them. But the emphasis isn't quite the same as most people speak it.

dictionary.com shows both with the same IPA: \wik\ and \pis\.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#84

Post by danielheath »

ff7c11 wrote: post #80
3pt14159 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're really quite close, both pairs of them. But the emphasis isn't quite the same as most people speak it.

I think they're identical.

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

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#85

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

idlewords wrote: post #67
xkjkls wrote: post #66

Can someone explain the usefulness of IPA currently? I guess I wonder what benefit there is to learning IPA at this point in time. I feel like its major usefulness was when there existed no way to communicate audio information easily, which is no longer the case.

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

spent some time in Asian countries learning Chinese and Thai (mostly trying to impress my local GF's at the time).

It took me ~6 months to understand where a word started and ended. When I tried saying the most simple things I got blank stares. But when when they repeated it back to me it sounded exactly like what I said all along.

Try to say "Dry wood burns doesn't it?" in Thai and you get different variations of the word "Mai" which sounds like "Mai mai mai maii?" ... or "spicy duck with pepper" that is just "phet ped pet ped PET ..." etc

I eventually ended up marrying a Japanese girl (so heating with wood was never an issue neither was ordering spicy duck with pepper). And their language is all rather monotone (as you probably know from your own time there).

using this IPA would have gotten me more ridicule than ordering spicy duck from a wooden grill. And if I would have trusted HN (and this chart) I'd still be feckless today thank you very much :P (I'll take an Indian Pale Ale though without all the moaning)

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#86

Post by watersb »

For English pronunciation, there's also the Color Vowel Chart.

https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/color-vowel-char...

One of the developers of this technique of teaching English sounds is a friend of mine. There's also games, matching words to colors, that can be played with all ages.

The few times I've been able to participate in one of these sessions, I learn something...

The difference between "door", "orange", and "dog" -- in southeastern states, I hear a vowel shift from one towards the others. My Californian friends couldn't quite hear it.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#87

Post by chalcolithic »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #65
bjackman wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once in a classroom in India attempting to teach English to Hindi speaking kids (I don't speak Hindi, but at that time I more or less knew the devanagari script). Someone told me a Hindi word and I wanted to write it on the blackboard in an example. There are (at least) 3 different consonants in Hindi that just sound like "T" to me. So it took me 3 attempts to spell this Hindi word correctly. The kids all absol…

The same happens with foreigners learning Mandarin Chinese. The consonants are easy, but each vowel can be pronounced with one of 4 different tones (or 5 if you count the 'neutral' tone). If you get a tone wrong, sometimes people will understand the erroneous word due to surrounding context. But pretty often you'll just elicit a blank stare. This is especially the case for short phrases, e.g. when you're asking for d…

>The consonants are easy

I wish. My teachers have no problem telling apart my j and q, but I rarely hear the difference despite all the cosonants in my native language coming in palatalized/non-palatalized pairs.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#88

Post by leephillips »

ff7c11 wrote: post #80
3pt14159 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're really quite close, both pairs of them. But the emphasis isn't quite the same as most people speak it.

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.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#89

Post by xkjkls »

idlewords wrote: post #67
xkjkls wrote: post #66

Can someone explain the usefulness of IPA currently? I guess I wonder what benefit there is to learning IPA at this point in time. I feel like its major usefulness was when there existed no way to communicate audio information easily, which is no longer the case.

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.

Re: Interactive IPA Chart

#90

Post by StavrosK »

gizmo686 wrote: post #82
StavrosK wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh aha, that's very interesting thanks! It's amazing how hard it is to parse things that you aren't primed for. I sometimes don't even recognize my native language for a while if I'm in an English-speaking country and hear it out of the blue without context.

I'm giving up my search for it, but I once read a research paper on categorical perception. If you compare [ta] and [da], you find that the only difference is the time between when you make the consonant, and when your vocal chords start vibrating (voice onset time). In theory, VOT is a contimum, with any value being possible. However, in English it forms a tri-modal distribution /tʰ/ /t/ and /d/. The experiment arti…

Hmm, very interesting, thank you! Is it this one?

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.103...

Seems to be exactly what you describe.

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