{"id":3248,"date":"2015-04-01T08:13:42","date_gmt":"2015-04-01T12:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=3248"},"modified":"2020-10-02T12:28:17","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T16:28:17","slug":"hacking-pronunciation-in-any-language-with-the-ipa-part-3-phonetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2015\/04\/01\/hacking-pronunciation-in-any-language-with-the-ipa-part-3-phonetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Hacking Pronunciation in Any Language with the IPA, Part 3: Phonetics"},"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

In the first<\/a> and second<\/a> posts in this series on pronunciation, we delved into phonology and using the IPA for learning consonants and vowels in any new language. If you\u2019ve been practicing, you should be ready for the third and most difficult part of pronunciation: phonetics.<\/p>\n

In the first post on consonants we learned that, for example, the \/p\/ in the English word \u2018pin\u2019 is a voiceless bilabial plosive. <\/em>But the same \/p\/, that very same voiceless bilabial plosive, is not the \/p\/ found in Spanish or Dutch or Hindi. In fact, a \/p\/ isn\u2019t always the same \/p\/ even within any given language \u2013 can you tell the difference between the \/p\/ in English words \u2018pin\u2019 and \u2018spin\u2019? Probably not; their pronunciation is so natural as to be made effortlessly by native speakers, but the difference also contributes to that \u2018almost perfect but not quite\u2019 accent that many English learners have.<\/p>\n

These most minute details of pronunciation are called phonetics, and they’re both the reason you have an accent in a foreign language and the trick to getting rid of that accent.<\/strong> And, just as with consonants and vowels, the IPA can help you train your tongue to execute flawless native-like pronunciation in any language.<\/p>\n

Phonetics vs. Phonology<\/strong><\/p>\n

What we\u2019ve talked about so far in this series is phonology<\/em>, the system of phonemes <\/em>or meaningful sounds in a language. In English, \/p\/ is a phoneme because the difference between it and other sounds yields the difference between pairs of different words like \u2018pin\u2019 and \u2018bin\u2019. However, the difference between the \/p\/ in \u2018pin\u2019 and that in \u2018spin\u2019 (we\u2019ll get to just exactly what the difference is in a moment) is not phonemic <\/em>because it\u2019s never used to distinguish between different words.<\/p>\n

These are phonetic <\/em>differences, and they\u2019re the most subtle details of pronunciation in any language. They\u2019re the reason why, even after your 10 years living in Mexico, your todo <\/em>doesn\u2019t sound quite like the Mexican todo<\/em>. You\u2019re probably saying something like [`th<\/sup>o-do] or [`th<\/sup>o-\u00f0o], while natives say [`to-\u00f0o] without that little puff of air represented by the superscript h<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"IPA\"<\/a>

The IPA diacritics chart, with many symbols for representing the phonetic details of sounds. Third from the top on the left, you’ll see aspiration, and ways of representing degrees of rounding are just below. (Image by International Phonetic Association on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported)<\/p><\/div>\n

Using the IPA for Phonetics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phonetics is not as neatly organized as phonology, and it\u2019d be impossible to discuss it exhaustively in one short blog post. Instead, here\u2019s a short sampling of the typical phonetic differences that give away even the most fluent of foreign language speakers as non-natives:<\/p>\n

Aspiration<\/em><\/strong>:<\/strong> I\u2019ve mentioned this one several times already because it\u2019s probably the number one sign of an Anglophone in any language. English stops [p, b, t, d, k, g] often have a lot of aspiration<\/em>, meaning a puff of breath from the throat following the release of the sound, but this is not necessarily normal in most world languages.<\/p>\n

Hold your hand in front of your mouth and say the words \u2018pin\u2019 and \u2018spin\u2019 (be sure to say them naturally and don\u2019t overemphasize any part of the words). You should feel a noticeable puff of air after the \/p\/ in \u2018pin\u2019, but not in \u2018spin\u2019. That first \/p\/ is aspirated, as are most word-initial stops in English, but the one that follows the \/s\/ is not.<\/p>\n

If you can practice saying words like \u2018pin\u2019, \u2018tab\u2019, \u2018kit\u2019, and others that start with stops, but saying them without releasing their normal puff of aspiration, you\u2019re on your way to a flawless accent in a language like Dutch that features little aspiration. Even more, many South Asian languages (like Hindi) make a phonemic <\/em>distinction between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, so that [pal], a verb meaning \u2018to take care of\u2019, is different than the word [ph<\/sup>al] with its aspirated \/p\/, meaning \u2018knife blade\u2019. Important distinction, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

Degree of rounding:<\/em><\/strong> If you listen to an American English speaker say \u2018no\u2019, and a native Spanish speaker say no <\/em>in Spanish, the difference is easy to hear. There are two aspects to this difference: one is diphthongization<\/a> (which can be talked about just using the regular IPA vowel chart), and the other is degree of rounding.<\/p>\n

Essentially, the English \/o\/ is made with the lips a bit more open than its Spanish cousin, whose articulation requires the lips to form a tight, nearly perfect circle. So if you hear a tiny difference like this one with a rounded vowel like \/o\/ or \/u\/, but your IPA vowel chart says you\u2019re using the right phoneme, try playing with the shape of your lips as you say it. You might find that a little more or less puckering was all you needed to cover up the little Union Jack that falls out of your mouth every time you answer in the negative in Spanish.<\/p>\n

Prosody<\/em><\/strong>:<\/strong> Prosody is the rhythm of speech, where the stresses fall within words and sentences, and it is another phonetic aspect that often pulls the trigger on the non-native flare gun. Prosody at the word level is fairly easy to learn: most English learners wouldn\u2019t say something like \u201cI\u2019m goING to the supermarket\u201d, with the emphasis on the latter half of the word \u2018going\u2019, but they may not know where to place the stress within the suprasegment of the sentence, whether \u2018going\u2019 or \u2018supermarket\u2019 is getting the most vocal attention.<\/p>\n

Even for phonetic details, prosody is tough to get down. It\u2019s often one of the very last aspects of nonnative speech that remain to give away the speaker\u2019s true identity, partly because it\u2019s nearly impossible to practice in any structured or focused way. Look at phonetic spellings in the dictionary to figure out where to put the stress within a word, and look for their patterns (for instance, affixes and grammatical inflections normally aren\u2019t stressed). For sentence prosody, try watching speeches or documentaries and repeating entire sentences exactly how you hear them, with an ear for which parts are receiving more or less stress.<\/p>\n

\"IPA<\/a>

IPA suprasegmentals, various marks used to show the prosody of speech. In the first line, for example, the word “phonetician” is transcribed phonetically, marking where the primary and secondary stresses fall.\u00a0(Image by International Phonetic Association on Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported)<\/p><\/div>\n

Getting control of the proper consonants<\/a> and vowels<\/a> is the first step toward proper pronunciation in a foreign language. When learning English, it\u2019s important to master the sound represented by the letters <th>, by putting your tongue between your teeth and squeezing air out. Escaping the trappings of your mother tongue and picking up the proper vowels of another language \u2013 like the notoriously difficult nasal vowels of French, or the series of sounds in Northern European languages that just sound like a flat \/\u01dd\/ to English speakers \u2013 is the second step, after which you can be sure you\u2019ll always be understood and probably even receive compliments on your pronunciation.<\/p>\n

But once you\u2019re in control of the basic sounds of your new language, if you want to reach all-star status, you\u2019ve got one final step to go. Want to see that gratifying look of surprise on someone\u2019s face when you say \u201coh, no, I\u2019m actually not from here\u201d? Then it\u2019s all about phonetics.<\/strong><\/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. In the first and second posts in this series on pronunciation, we delved into phonology and using the IPA for learning consonants and vowels…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3248","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3248"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6987,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3248\/revisions\/6987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}