{"id":3138,"date":"2015-03-02T08:21:50","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T13:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=3138"},"modified":"2020-10-02T12:58:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T16:58:03","slug":"hacking-pronunciation-in-any-language-with-the-ipa-part-2-vowels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2015\/03\/02\/hacking-pronunciation-in-any-language-with-the-ipa-part-2-vowels\/","title":{"rendered":"Hacking Pronunciation in Any Language with the IPA, Part 2: Vowels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jakob Gibbons writes about language and travel on his blog\u00a0Globalect<\/a>. He often shares his experiences with learning languages on the road, and teaching and learning new speech sounds is his specialty.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learning words and how to put them into sentences is certainly the first step in learning a new language. But once you\u2019re ready to say those sentences out loud, those endless hours of vocabulary and grammar drills aren\u2019t going to get you very far if no one can understand what you\u2019re saying. Pronunciation is too often the highest hurdle for the aspiring language learner, even though it doesn\u2019t need to be.<\/p>\n

In my last post<\/a> for Transparent Language, I wrote about using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to crack the consonant code in a new language. In this post, we\u2019ll use the same tool to navigate the infinitely more frustrating and confounding group of speech sounds: vowels.<\/p>\n

Vowels matter.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While I\u2019m traveling I meet people of all different language backgrounds, and a few conversations seem to repeat themselves in nearly every country. One of the most tiresome is one I often have in English with Romance language speakers, and it always goes something like this:<\/p>\n

Spanish\/French\/Italian guy<\/em>: Ahh, so you\u2019re traveling through [country name]? What kind of places will you visit? Big cities? Mountains? Forest?<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>: Well I really love beaches. I grew up in Florida and I just really appreciate a good beach.<\/p>\n

Spanish\/French\/Italian guy<\/em>: OOOH-HO-HO, yes yes, we aaallll love a good beach, my friend! *wink, elbow nudge*<\/p>\n

This is because, to my Mediterranean friend, the words \u2018beach\u2019 and \u2018bitch\u2019 often sound identical. Spanish, Italian, and French all lack the distinction between the tense vowel \/i\/ in \u2018beach\u2019 and the lax vowel \/\u026a\/ in \u2018bitch\u2019, leaving me forcing an overly-toothy fake smile and chuckling at a word joke that I\u2019ve heard a thousand times (and is also not really a word joke, or any kind of joke).<\/p>\n

Finding (and pronouncing) a good beach<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you want to avoid accidental rudeness or embarassing dad-like humor, take a look at the IPA vowel chart. Its trapezoidal shape is an abstract representation of the shape of your mouth: the corner at \/i\/ represents your top lip, \/a\/ the bottom, \/u\/ the top of the back of your mouth, and \/\u0252\/ the opening of your throat.<\/p>\n

What the vowel chart depicts is where the highest point of your tongue <\/em>is in making any of these sounds.<\/p>\n

\"IPA2\"<\/a>

Image by International Phonetic Association on Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported<\/p><\/div>\n

Let\u2019s take the sounds in the English words \u2018too\u2019 and \u2018see\u2019. Make the vowel sounds: \u2018oooooooo\u2019 \/u\/ and \u2018eeeeeeee\u2019 \/i\/. Now, if you alternate back and forth between them \u2013 oooooooeeeeeeeeooooooeeeeeee, sort of like the sound of an approaching ambulance \u2013 you\u2019ll feel your tongue moving, like it\u2019s doing the wave in your mouth. At \/u\/, its highest point is in the top back, and at \/i\/ it\u2019s highest in the top front. The sounds in \u2018too\u2019 and \u2018see\u2019 differ only slightly in their physical articulation: \/i\/ is more fronted <\/em>and \/u\/ is backed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The IPA vowel chart shows you how to produce any vowel sound by combining its main ingredients. While there are some other, slightly more complicated aspects of vowels (like tension and nasalization), here we\u2019ll focus on the three principal parts:<\/p>\n

Frontness<\/em>: <\/strong>When you move from \/i\/ to \/u\/, you\u2019re going from front to back. It\u2019s the same difference between the \/\u00e6\/ in \u2018sad\u2019 and the \/\u0251\/ in \u2018saw\u2019. The horizontal position <\/em>of your tongue in your mouth is called frontness <\/em>or backness<\/em>, and it\u2019s super intuitive: front vowels<\/em> are made with the tongue curved up in the front of the mouth, and back vowels<\/em> are made with that high point in the back, closer to the throat. When the peak of your tongue is somewhere in between these extremes, it\u2019s a central vowel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Height<\/em>:<\/strong> If frontness is the X-axis of vowel articulation, then height <\/em>is the Y. If you move from \/u\/ to \/\u0251\/, from the sound in \u2018too\u2019 to the one in \u2018saw\u2019, you\u2019re now descending vertically, from high to low. Just like frontness, this one makes a lot of sense: high vowels <\/em>are made higher in the mouth, and low vowels <\/em>down low. The middle ones are called mid vowels.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rounding<\/em>:<\/strong> It\u2019s not all about your tongue \u2013 the lips get the final say on what vowel comes out of your mouth. Starting again from the same \/u\/ sound in \u2018room\u2019 and moving to the \/\u028a\/ in \u2018rum\u2019, your tongue stays the same, and it\u2019s your lips that do the talking. Rounded vowels <\/em>are made with puckered lips, like \/u\/ and \/o\/ in \u2018too\u2019 and \u2018toe\u2019 in English. Unrounded <\/em>are all the rest, with relaxed lips.<\/p>\n

Figuring out new vowels<\/strong><\/p>\n

Knowing where your current vowel inventory takes place in your mouth is sort of interesting, but isn\u2019t immediately helpful: unlike their simpler consonant cousins, vowels aren\u2019t precise enough to just \u2018get\u2019 by figuring out something as concrete as place and manner of articulation.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m working on a new language, I start by identifying the vowels I lack, finding their closest equivalents in a language I do speak, and then figuring out the difference between that vowel I\u2019ve already got down and the one I\u2019m reaching for.<\/p>\n

If you order an omlette du fromage <\/em>in Paris, that du<\/em> shouldn\u2019t really sound like your English \u2018do\u2019. This is a high, front, rounded vowel in French: \/y\/. As an English speaker, there are two easy paths to ordering your omlette with native-like precision.<\/p>\n

The first and maybe more natural path is starting with the vowel that it sort of sounds like <\/em>in English: the \/u\/ in \u2018do\u2019. So what\u2019s the difference between \u2018do\u2019 and du<\/em>? That\u2019s right: frontness! Push that already-rounded \/u\/ sound in \u2018do\u2019 right to the front of your mouth, and voila<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The second is the less intuitive but easier route. French rounded \/y\/ is, believe it or not, nearly<\/em> exactly the same sound <\/em>as \/i\/ in English \u2018eat\u2019. The only difference is rounding. If you eat meat in the street<\/em> with rounded lips, then suddenly you\u2019re dining roadside with a heavy French accent, because you\u2019re using the same sound in du<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Vowels are notoriously hard to get right in a foreign language, and are often the source of the giant NOT FROM HERE sign that falls out of your mouth every time you speak. But with the IPA, a little studying, and some practice, you can have a nice conversation about the beach without offending a single person in the room.<\/p>\n

The last step toward perfect pronunciation in a foreign language is phonetics<\/em>, the infinitessimal details that define native pronunciation. In my next post for Transparent Language, I\u2019ll share how you can use the principles of the IPA and phonology to pin down why your \u2018perfect\u2019 pronunciation isn\u2019t quite perfect.<\/p>\n

If regular old consonants and vowels are too easy for you, head to Part 3<\/a> to work on phonetics and really start speaking like a native!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Jakob Gibbons writes about language and travel on his blog\u00a0Globalect. He often shares his experiences with learning languages on the road, and teaching and learning new speech sounds is his specialty. Learning words and how to put them into sentences is certainly the first step in learning a new language. But once you\u2019re ready to…<\/p>\n

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