How to read the International Phonetic Alphabet | Complete Beginners Guide
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ค. 2024
- The IPA is one of the first things you will likely learn in any Linguistics class, and it is essential to any discussion of pronunciation. In this 3 part video series, I give you all the information you need to know about the International Phonetic Alphabet.
To see my Linguistics 101 Video series, click the links below:
Phonetics: • Phonetics: Intro to li...
Phonology: • Phonology: Intro to li...
0:00 The International Phonetic Alphabet
1:07 Why we need the IPA
3:46 Vowels in the IPA
7:09 Consonants in the IPA
15:00 IPA Practice Exercises
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Welcome! I am an aspiring polyglot with a degree in Linguistics. I speak English, Spanish, French, and Esperanto, and I'm currently working on Thai. I make videos twice a week to talk about my methods of learning languages and to try to help others make language learning faster, easier, and more fun.
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I went to Columbia University grad school for acting.... We had an accent class and I learned more watching this video than I did in the whole semester.
Haha well I’m glad my videos are helpful!
The curvy U vowel cannot be a schwa sound, but it was pronounced exactly as a schwa, and I usually spell the schwa sound uh when writing the phonetic spelling as it’s the same sound as when saying uh-huh, even though there is no u sound in the schwa sound, and the u in the word but is pronounced as a schwa sound usually and sometimes pronounced with more of an a sound, not as an u-based sound, and the upside down v was literally pronounced as a schwa first when said on its own, but it’s supposed to be a type of a like a closed a maybe, unless it’s some odd dialect, I don’t know,, and honestly, I cannot hear any difference between the regular u sound and the curvy u sound in words, it’s literally just an u sound, like, about is pronounced schwa sound and baut / uh-baut, so, was the curvy u symbol really necessary, and, the æ in English isn’t always pronounced that way, and it’s usually more like an open a sound like the æ in Norwegian, or more towards an e sound, and not really like an ea sound as in Faroese which is how it was pronounced here, well, it was at least close to how the æ and sometimes the a are pronounced in Faroese in many of the words, and I used to hear this pronunciation in English more in the past, but nowadays it is pronounced more towards an open a sound than an e sound and it sounds more like a one-vowel sound and not like a diphthong, and, the ng sound is actually an n sound with a bit of a g sound or like half of the g sound when at the end of the word tho when saying singing the G sound is pronounced fully and one can tell that there is a g sound in there, so it’s not a different sound, and it only sounds like one sound at first because the two sounds are said together fast in one sound like the yu sound in Icelandic / English / Norse / French / Dutch / German etc which is usually spellt ü in German and uu / u in Dutch and u in the other four, and also, not everyone says the schwa so many times, like, in words that end in es that have a vowel I usually use an i-based sound instead of the schwa-based sound, and at the end of the word I don’t use schwa sound because schwa sounds don’t sound good at the end of the word, and instead it should be an a sound at the end, and I don’t usually pronounce the p and the b that way as it’s a lot easier to just say the p and the b normally, plus it sounds softer and more elegant, so most of the times I pronounce them normally / softly when at the beginning of the word! The ø / ö / œ in Norse and Icelandic and Norwegian and French etc is a diphthong basically, so it’s an eo sound aka normal e sound and normal o sound said together in one sound, whereas the u in English / Icelandic / Norse is usually pronounced yu / iu like the ü, but normally an u is just a normal u sound like in Spanish and like the ú in Norse and Icelandic! I cannot read the IPA, but I can usually explain the sounds without difficulty, for example, the word crayon is literally pronounced crei + schwa sound + n sound, at least in the regular accent, and also, there is no difference between y and I which is literally a normal i sound like the i in Spanish and like the ý / í in Icelandic and Norse, but for some reason it seems to have two different IPA symbols, and the j is a j sound like the j in the French word je and not an y sound, so I don’t know why it is used for an y sound, which can make it very confusing, but I always wanted to know if there is any IPA symbol for the unique Dutch vowel that is between a normal A sound and a normal E sound which is how most speakers say the ij and the ei in words like fijn / trein / pijn in Dutch, with the unique vowel that’s between E and A and then an extra y / i vowel, which are sad together in one sound, without break between the two vowels, because I don’t remember to have heard this vowel in IPA videos, but it is a different vowel, just like the schwa is a different vowel that’s related to A tho it isn’t the same vowel, and like the vowel between an i sound and and e sound that is used in English words like chip and with which is the same a the i / y in Norse and Icelandic! (BTW, I am the only Lady / fair etc!)
By the way, I am close to advanced level in Norse and advanced level in Icelandic and Norwegian, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, and I can explain the sounds without using the IPA - by the way, I’ll use DH for the eth sound ð which is the TH sound in the English words this / the / that etc which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English words think / thing / thorn etc that represents the thorn letter þ and the thorn sound, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that kinda melts into a soft O sound!
For example...
- hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat
- mæra sounds like mera
- ávast sounds like avast
- nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r
- líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr
- frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda
- þat sounds like that
- ræðir sounds like reidhir
- hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr)
- gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr
- hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used)
Also...
- hæll sounds like heyl
- saltr sounds like solt:r
- mæla sounds like mala
- drápa sounds like drapa or dropa
- kæra sounds like kaera or kaira
- ferr sounds like fer:r
- jafna sounds like yavna
- hœgri sounds like heoyri
- girðing sounds like girdhing
- hádegi sounds like haodegi
- ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust
The word...
- verr sounds like ver
- ekki sounds like eki or ehki
- þverra sounds like thverra
- gegna sounds like gekna
- vefja sounds like vevya
- yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic
- ætla sounds like etla
- ofn sounds like ovn
- náliga sounds like naoliga
- sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written
- ofleti sounds like ofleti
EY and EI are pronounced the way they are spellt, that is, normal e sound and normal i sound, like the ei in the English word eight, and, the letter J is pronounced like a normal i / y sound as in the English word yet...
The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word...
I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ / æ and æ̨ (and the ones with the accent) in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse, but in many Norse words such as ætla and stærri the æ is pronounced like an e sound, but anyways, for the diphthong AU I recommend an ai pronunciation in many words such as auga (aiga) and sauma (saima) etc, and an au or ao pronunciation when at the end of the word, for example, in adjectives that end in lauss...
Ð and Þ are the eth and the thorn sounds - the eth letter ð is a type of d sound that’s less obvious like the th in the English word then and like the d in the Spanish word nada, while the thorn letter þ is a type of t sound that’s less obvious like the th in the English word thinking...
Ø and Œ and Ö are pronounced eo and this is a normal e sound and a normal o sound said together in one sound, and the ǿ sounds kind of the same, and, it is the same sound as the o in Norwegian and Faroese and the œ in the French word cœur and the ö in German and Icelandic and Swedish...
LL should be pronounced DL or TL like in Icelandic and Faroese in certain situations, for example, when a masculine noun in Norse ends in LL in its nominative form, it’s better to pronounce it like in Icelandic, so that it sounds a bit different from its accusative form which has only one L at the end, and in cases wherein the word would sound better with a TL sound, it should also be pronounced TL - however, most other times it can be pronounced like a normal L sound as it is easier...
Now, the Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R aka a tap in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas rolled or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined...
HV is always pronounced with a V sound in Norse (there is no W sound in West Norse) and, when the word that starts with hv is at the beginning of the sentence it is pronounced hv with the h sound before the v sound, but when the word is in the middle or at the end of the sentence it is pronounced v without the h sound because it flows more naturally, and in certain words like hvass and hvassir it should be pronounced kv with a k sound before the v sound because this type of words sound better with a kv pronunciation - most Norse words don’t sound right with a W sound, except for a few words such as kvern and hvískr / hvískrit which sound right with both w and v sounds, but almost every other Norse word should be pronounced with v sound...
Vowels are easy - most of them are pronounced like in Icelandic actually...
- á is usually pronounced like an a sound that is a bit more closed and sometimes it is pronounced more towards an o sound tho in certain words it is pronounced like a normal a sound
- a is a normal a sound
- ą sounds like a normal a sound that is a bit more open than the a sound
- é is pronounced between a normal e sound and a normal i sound tho a bit more towards a normal i sound than a normal e sound like the é in Hungarian (especially in words like vér / ér / mér / þér / sér etc) which is a one-sound sound and not a diphthong like the ye in Icelandic
- e is a normal e sound
- ę sounds like a normal open e sound
- í and ý are pronounced like a normal i / y sound as in Icelandic
- i and y are pronounced between a normal i sound and a normal e sound tho more towards an e sound like in Icelandic and like the i in the English words with / in / chip etc tho in many words they are pronounced like a normal i sound
- į sounds like a normal open i sound
- ó is pronounced ou as in Icelandic
- o is a normal o sound that’s a bit more closed
- ǫ sounds like a normal open o sound tho it can also be pronounced like the ö (eo) letter and both pronunciations are correct because normally that letter would correspond to the ö letter in Icelandic which was replaced with the ǫ letter in Norse to make Norse spelling and aspect a bit more different
- ú is a normal u sound as in Icelandic
- u is pronounced like a rounded iu / ü / yu sound like in Icelandic and like the uu in Dutch and the u in Swedish and French and the ü in German
- ų sounds like the u and is a bit more towards the normal u sound than the i sound
The vowel á in Norse can be pronounced in three to five different ways, depending on the word - for example, in words like á (the one that means on) and svá it is pronounced more like a normal O sound or between an A sound and an O sound, kinda like the A in Hungarian, while in many words like ávalt and ávast etc it sounds like a normal A sound, and in the conjugated verb form á (ek á = i own) it should be pronounced either AO or AU like in Icelandic...
Consonants are usually pronounced the same way that they are pronounced in Icelandic and English, especially h and l as well as m and n which sound like in English, and the d consonant is also pronounced like in English in most words tho in certain words it is pronounced like a t sound, while t is pronounced like a normal t sound, and the s and the z are also pronounced normally like the s in the English word stormed and the z in the English word zephyr respectively, and the consonants b and p are usually pronounced normally in most words tho in certain words the b may be pronounced p and the p may be pronounced b - the consonant f is usually pronounced normally when at the beginning of the word tho when it is in the middle of the word and at the end of the word it is pronounced like a v sound usually, whereas k is pronounced normally, but g is also pronounced like a k sound many times (especially at the end of the word) tho it is usually pronounced like a normal g sound like the g in the English word ‘getting’ when at the beginning of the word and sometimes it is pronounced like a softer g that is like a less obvious normal g in words such as segir and saga...
By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, so the Gs at the end of the words are almost always pronounced as a K sound in Norse, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse...
Honestly learning IPA was one of my biggest and most rapid return on investment. It took me 2 days to get along with it and it improved my english pronunciation drastically and quicker in two weeks than all the precedent years that I spent studying the language. What a shame it is not always taught in schools 😕
Great video and thanks for posting - you made the topic accessible and fun.
Slight error at 11:43: ð is lowercase "eth", not "thorn" (þ).
As a total beginner, the drills are really useful to bring the theory to life.
I love your channel. You give us tip to learn a second language, you teach us phonetics, linguistics, you speak to us in french, Spanish, Thai, you're awesome and I would love a teacher like you. Aaron, you're one of the best teachers I have no TH-cam 😎
I think you're the only one on TH-cam with this information. Thank you man!
Thanks for the encouraging comment! Glad to help 😊
@@FingtamLanguages He is not the only one. Our Russian teachers in Kyrgyzstan taught us using the phonetic alphabet so that we knew how to say English words.
Thanks for this really helpful video! I'm an English major and we're taking up Phonetics now so this is just perfect. Easy to understand and not to mention entertaining, especially with the Disney references 😆
Great video, Aaron! I love this series: please keep these videos coming! 😃
Dankon Rafa! Jes, mi certe faros pli!
Thank you for such a wonderful teaching video and even listing the link to your other IPA video.
First thing I do when I start a new language is google phonology of language and focus on phonetics (IPA) of the sounds of the language. I do this before I even start lesson 1 of the language. I discovered your channel tonight and I can tell right away that you are someone who has learned how to master languages. Congratulations.
And he only got 30k views on this video despite explaining the most important topic in a language learning process :c
Thank you for this video and giving a comprehensive explanation. I've been looking at IPA videos and it is so frustrating that some videos just don't explain anything, show no chart, and straight dive into pronouncing just some random letters.
Great teacher! The Bantu pronunciation is on point :)
This is great! I'm an amateur linguist and trying to master German and Dutch. When languages have overlapping words that are spelled the same or similarly, it's best to focus on pronunciation. Excellent pronunciation means that when you read a passage, you hear it in the language as opposed to some poorly rendered sounds that aren't from that language. Thanks again for a great video.
Thanks a lot! I just started learning the IPA and this comes in handy.
Awesome! Glad it was helpful :)
Very valuable, thanks
THANK U SM FOR GOING DEEPER THAN THE ENGLISH SOUNDS
Thank you very much for the video
Just got curious among IPA, are there any websites/apps where they make quiz (pluralis) or exercises.
Sometimes I wish this was taught earlier in children school, and I even wish that books/articles were written in IPA's. Even though, language is very subjective and can be used in many dialects, though I think it would interact with the reader some more rather than the usual usage of alphabets.
Btw I'm also really glad that I found this Channel, I've been wanted to learn lots of language. With this, would be a great start to learn IPA. Also it made me wonder, are there other types of IPA's, besides the Europe-central IPA? By Europe-central I mean, Europe+USA's IPA. If that makes sense.
Thank u for this
Useful video thanks !
Thanks for the comment! :)
Thank you
I just realized I sort if reinvented this system while playing with vowels the other day.
Hi from Brazil!
I have heard people in Utah pronounce the g in a final ng such as kinG and sonG.
2:57 what are you using ? What type of programm is that ? I want to know it
Love from Bangladesh ❤🇧🇩
I have Oxford dictionary with such transcriptions for fifty years.
the glottal stop is from Lushootseed alphabet
Dear Dr. Lindsey,
I beg to differ about the traditional New York accent. The non-rhotic accent that is popularly associated with New York City is originally a Dublin Irish accent brought in by immigrants in the 1800s who settled in the Lower East Side and spread from there to New Jersey. The real traditional New York City accent, which is called Anglo-Dutch is in fact a rhotic accent. The best known speaker of it was probably Dick Cavett. The classic way of detecting it, is to ask a speaker to pronounce the three words merry, marry, and Mary. In the Anglo-Dutch accent, these three words have different first vowels. Merry is pronounced mεri, marry is pronounced mæri, and Mary is pronounced meri. (I'm not using the right symbol for the r sound I know). For most Americans, the three words are pronounced identically.
C'est très intéressant et cool ! J'ai envie d'aller voir le Roi Lion maintenant. MDR
C'est un excellent film!
My favorite -ough sound is "p", as in hiccough!
6:50 Actually I believe if you’re from Wisconsin, your pronunciation of “bot” is closer to /a/ than /ɑ/ bc of the northern vowel shift, and your pronunciation sounds more like it to me. Generally everywhere else in America says it with /ɑ/.
And I heard it when you said spock and pocket
Haha It's hard for me to here my own accent. I also thought I pronounce 'King' as /kiŋ/, but everyone I've talked to about it says I pronounce it like /kɪŋ/, so I guess I just can't hear my own accent.
Great video, IPA always seemed a bit daunting but it's actually quite logical. The exercises were also really useful but I honestly don't think the IPA is 100% accurate (even when it comes to the representation of a single dialect), nevertheless it's a great tool still
The IPA can be quite precise under the right circumstances. I took a few liberties on my transcriptions in this video for the sake of simplicity, but a true phonologies or phonetician can be much more accurate.
that's what the diacritics and extIPA symbols are for :) you can get really precise with how you transcribe things. for example, one might normally transcribe "sixths" as /sɪksθs/, but I could get more precise to exactly I pronounce it as [s̪ɪˀk̚s̪θ̙s̪]
7:33 general rule of the chart
7:10 TS
How’s your Thai going? I’m also in Bangkok right now visiting family (im thai american)
It’s coming along nicely, thanks! Heck of a time to visit Bangkok! 😅
15:00 exercise
In 'Hakuna Matata', why the ɾ and not a d? I don't think the ɾ sounds like a d at all.
11:43 eth*
The upside down e is called "schwah" because it is considered a "weak 'e'". Schwah means weak in German.
That’s because it’s always in the unstressed syllable
You're wrong. The German word for "weak" is "scwach," and that "ch" at the end gets pronounced. It is a voiceless velar fricative. The word "schwa" is a loanword from Hebrew.
I'm sorry what? As a native Hebrew speaker we do not have such word are schwa, it's similar to the word sha-ve Which means equal but I've never seen such word. can you tell me the word in Hebrew maybe?@@bigscarysteve
1:25 You misspelled "Thorough" as "Thoughough" and left out "Through: /u/"
ผมมาจากติ๊กต๊อก กำลังหัดภาษา😁
สวัสดีครับ 🤗
Do you speak spanish?
Where is the map?!?
The biggest problem with the IPA is that it uses existing letters from the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. It would have been better if they used all original symbols to avoid confusion.
BRITISH ENGLISH OR AMERICAN ENGLISH ???
I'm learning Welsh language. I don't know nothing😊
Kɹeɪ ɑ:n
That’s how i pronounce crayon
HƏ'lō
Damn I hate vawels, my brain can only tell apart between 5
Awesome vid
Only disagree with cernel and carmel...
They are spoken as written imho; co-lo-nel, ca-ra-mel
Big error wih the /e/ sound. It does not exist in Spanish, and is only in "bait" in northern UK accents.
This looks really difficult to master. 😐
It’s not as hard as you think! :)
@@FingtamLanguages I hope so.
It depends on how you were taught to read. (And I'm assuming you're a native English speaker. If not, other twists may arise that I'm not anticipating.) If you were taught to read by the whole language method, you'll find this harder than if you learned to read using the phonics method. You probably don't know which method your teacher used, but I have a test you can use which will likely demonstrate which one you got. If you can take any random word and break it up into its constituent sounds (and I do mean SOUNDS, not letters!) without too much difficulty, you probably learned to read via phonics. Anyhow, if you learned to read via phonics, you'll find this much easier going than if you suffered under the whole language method.
Keeping in mind, of course, but hallelujah it’s not an English word. It’s a Hebrew word.
light is clearly with an /i/, not with an /I/ (capital I)
Kya phaltu video h
You need to shiw your face and mouth when showing sounds. Tjats is lime english teaching 1010. Come on!