Welcome to Phonetics

CD 233

Lisa Lavoie

In just a few short months…

You’ll have trained ears

You’ll know how to transcribe English… Standard American and other varieties Foreign accents, kids’ disordered

You’ll understand how speech is articulated

Introduce yourselves

Tell us how you say your name

I’ll transcribe it on the board

Also tell us: Where you grew up Other languages you speak or studied What kind of an accent you think you have

Knowledge and skills today

Take home the sheet and fill it out

Bring it back next Wednesday

We’ll look at it again at the end of the course to see how much you have learned

Phoneticians study…

The sounds of speech (and their variation)

Auditory: how sounds are perceived

Articulatory: how sounds are made

Acoustic: the physics of speech sounds

Signed languages also have phonetics

What you can do with phonetics

Understand speech errors

Make computers speak

Help someone master a new sound

Figure out where someone is from

Determine if a child is developing normally

Mouth some speech silently

Speaking is something that most of us do effortlessly

In phonetics, we break that down into the components

What can you feel moving to produce speech?

X-ray videos or cineradiographs

Observe closely One part of the vocal tract at a time Lips, tongue, velum, throat/pharynx “On top of his deck”

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1.1/chapter1.1.htm

Structure of the course

Syllabus, requirements, participation!

Work hard early to cover the basics

3 take home exams (no final exam)

Various homework and quizzes

A small project

Final project (group or individual)

Spelling? Trustworthy?

We all know how to spell; couldn’t we just use that?

Examples why or why not…

Write these pronunciations

Tomato, Bach, dog, fire, exit, garage

Did we all do the same things?

Try these sentences

The wind is strong enough to wind the windmill.

Please polish the Polish silver.

It took a minute to find the minute latch.

Excuse me while I think of an excuse.

Separate the cards into separate piles.

Correspondences in spelling

Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the seas?

See, senile, sea, seize, scenic, siege, ceiling, cedar, cease, juicy, sexy, glossy

Show, issue, mansion, national, suspicion, ocean, conscious, chaperone, fuschia

Breeze, cheese, ease, sleaze, frieze

Many spellings for one pronunciation

More spelling correspondences

Tough, cough, through, though, hiccough, bough, thoroughfare

Love, move, rove (eye rhymes)

One spelling for many pronunciations

No one-to-one correspondence between sound and spelling

Representing sounds of speech

To do this accurately, must have a standard

Using a standard with one-to-one sound to spelling correspondence

IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet Global standard, used in: Communication disorders, theater, Language teaching, dictionaries, directories, Theoretical and computational linguistics

How many sounds?

First step in transcribing is breaking down into individual sounds (ignoring the spelling!)… Cat Snack Moon Planet Boy Girl

How many sounds? Part 2

Remember to ignore the spelling and trust your own pronunciation Taxi Bathing Chocolate Gnome Slippery Prints Laundry

How many sounds? Part 3

Knee Catalogue Abode Almond Psychology Enough Phlegm Xerox

Consonants and vowels of English

How many different consonants do you guess English has?

How about vowels?

And diphthongs?

Consonants and vowels of English

How many different consonants do you guess English has? 24

How about vowels? 14

And diphthongs? 3, 4, or 6 depending on how you count

Consonants

Pretty easy because our usual alphabetic symbols represent them pretty well

16 of the 24 are exactly what you’d expect

Name some consonantsAnd here are the rest…Practice writing the symbols

Easier symbols for consonants

Important: use lower case

Upper case may represent totally different sound - example of B

p b t d k g m n f v s z h l r w

More challenging consonants

Engma “ng”: ŋ Theta for “th” “thin”: θ Eth for other “th” “the”: ð

Esh – “sh” elongated s: ʃ Ezh – z with tail: ʒ “ch” – 2 symbols: tʃ “j” – 2 symbols: d ʒ “y” j

Using the consonant symbols

Examples

The trickier symbols in different positions

The concept of a minimal pair or set

Vowels

Trickier! Sorry. English varies a lot in vowels Fewer letters of alphabet to begin with So more symbols to master

Fill in frame of “h_d” with different vowels to make as many words as possible

Vowel Symbols – basic 5 vowels

Romance language vowels

i u

e o

a

English has more vowels!

Refer to handout of symbols for transcription

Do examples on board together

Diphthongs

3 true diphthongsaɪ pieaʊ powɔɪ poi

Sometimes called diphthongseɪ payoʊ po (the Teletubbie)

ju pew   

Using the vowel symbols

Examples in different positions

Slight differences

Unstressed syllables

Vowels before /r/ are extremely tricky and more info and tips will come

Homework

Begin studying the symbols!

Submit HW 1 by midnight Saturday

Submit HW 2 before class on Wednesday

Get in touch with me if you’re having issues – don’t suffer in silence!