Intro page8/The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Up until recently, the Kenyon & Knott (KK) phonetic symbols were widely taught in Taiwan schools to indicate how to pronounce an English word. Knowing KK is a ... 8. TheInternationalPhoneticAlphabet(IPA)      Note: Makesurethat youhavetheLucida SansUnicodefontinstalledinyourcomputersothattheIPAsymbolswill displaycorrectly.      Up untilrecently,theKenyon&Knott(KK)phoneticsymbolswerewidelytaught inTaiwanschoolstoindicatehowtopronounceanEnglishword.KnowingKKis adefiniteadvantage,sincethissystemisbasicallyasubsetoftheIPA,International PhoneticAssociation/Alphabet國際音標system.Ifyoudon'tknowKK,thenyouwill needtolearnIPAfromscratchforthisclass,whichactuallyshouldn'tbetoo difficult,butitwillrequiresomepractice.      IfyoudoalreadyknowKK,youwillneedtopay specialattentiontotheIPAsymbolsforsoundsthataretranscribeddifferently thaninKKThemostimportantdifferencesare:      (1) theKK[o]iswritten[oʊ] inIPA;thisclearlyshowsthatthesoundisadiphthong,i.e.composedoftwo vowelsandnotjustone;      (2) similarly,theKK[e]iswritten[eɪ] inIPA;thisisadiphthongthatTaiwanspeakersofEnglisharenotoriousfor pronouncingwrong,oftenasamonophthong,eitherashort[æ] or[ɛ];      (3) theKK[r]iswritten[ɹ] inIPA;      (4)theAmericantap,asinthe soundwrittenwith't'in'water'iswrittenwitha'fishhook'symbol[ɾ], andnot[t].      (5)Final"-y"istranscribed asalong/i/,NOTashort/ɪ/!      Wewilllearnaboutotherdifferencesaswego along.NotethatwewillbelearningonestyleofIPAtranscription;thesymbols chosencananddoinfactvaryfromlanguagetolanguageandtextbooktotextbook. Next:IPA fonts,Ethnologue,andmore on tonextpage       back        index I       index II        home