I present the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). ( IPA website)
Basically this here is the cheat code for all pronunciation of every language
E v e r y. L a n g u a g e.
How?? Well, each symbol corresponds to one sound.
The table shows you where the sound is located and what your tongue has to do to pronounce that sound.
Example:
æ is said at the back of your throat while your throat is around halfway closed (indicated by its location relative to the words “open” and “front). This sound is found in
“back“ (in the Standard/General American dialect).
ŋ
is said by touching the base of your tongue to where the roof of your mouth gets soft (the velum) and exhaling through your noise while making noise (indicated by “velar” and “nasal”). This sound is found “song”.
As you can see, “ng” in “song” is made up of two letters that have different sounds while separate, but together they make a different sound. And English has some letters that correspond to several sounds all on their own! This is the case on many other languages, and trips up a lot of foreign language learners.
IPA ELIMINATES THIS DIFFICULTY BECAUSE EACH SYMBOL = 1 SOUND
lol sorry for all caps but im excited and this is important so
But how will this actually help you? Because dictionaries are amazing.
See that? That’s the entry for “language” in Merriam-Webster.
It shows two ways of pronouncing the word: ‘laŋ-gwij, and
’laŋ-wij, and indicates which syllable is stressed by putting a ‘ in front of the stressed syllable.
Pretty cool, right?
Here are some examples of IPA in action in different languages:
French: deux -> /dø/
Korean: 내가 -> /nɛ-ɡa/ or /ne-ga/
Afrikaans: seun -> /sɪøn/
Standard Arabic: عَيْن -> /ʕajn/
Ready to try this out for your own?
If you just want to only know how to pronounce your target language’s sounds:
Learn how to say the sounds in your TL by understanding the column/row titles that they are in on the IPA chart
(consonants here and vowels here)
Optional (or if you don’t have a dictionary):
Get the IPA charts for your target language (usually on its wikipedia page at “_target language_ Phonology”. If it’s not there then look up “_target
language_ IPA transcription”)
It’s a lot less intimidating when it’s the sounds for only one language, right?
REMEMBER: you don’t need to be able to pronounce every sound in IPA to make use of this chart, just know
how
to make them and what these symbols sound like (more or less) and your life of learning pronunciation will be so much easier
So there you have it:
The Secret to Perfect Pronunication in Any Language
Go, be free my language-learning friends, go pronounce things like natives!
and get rid of that nasty romanization for all my fellow korean learners
(oh
and if anyone has any questions about this, send em my way! i know
there are a couple linguistics blogs that follow me so if any of yall
wanna add smth, plz do!)
yall better reblog the heck outta this bc my hard work CANNOT go wasted ok?? i’ve been researching/writing/revising this for idk how long and my head hurts really bad asjdfsdg help
Using the IPA to learn languages helped me learn the Korean alphabet easily on my own and it streamlined the way I learned the Arabic alphabet, impressing my teacher. To the langblr blogs following me, I recommend searching for IPA resources to help you learn.
Quibble – that example from Merriam-Webster is not IPA. Many English dictionaries use their own, non-IPA phonetic symbols. Assuming they are IPA, and applying IPA values to them, will lead to egregious mispronunciations. For example, the IPA rendering of the last consonant in “language” is actually /dʒ/ and not /j/. Were I to assume those symbols were IPA, I might pronounce the word more like “long wee”. And nobody wants that.
A Vulcan ambassador gets (gasp!) accused of being bad at her job and also of being a criminal, so the Enterprise plays the role of interstellar bail bondsman to bring her to justice, only maybe, just maybe, everything is not as it seems!
Steven might actually become friends with the diamonds???
“no one is truly evil”
“i dont know if that’s true in reality”
no offense but im seriously gonna square up with rebecca holy shit
are you fucking kidding me Rebecca sugar?????
Rebecca sugar probably thought that hitler should of been kindly talked to
rebecca sugar is jewish ya piece of shit
Wait but like…. do I need to remind you all that this is a kids show? Of course things are solved like this, the intent is to teach children how to healthily interact with problems. Of course its childish. Steven is a child on a show for children.
rebecca sugar: i want my childrens show to teach kids the value of settling differences by coming to understand and care for eachother. even if that isn’t always possible in reality i think they are important values to try and get across, especially in a childrens fantasy tv show
you weirdos: this is fascism apologism
[text reads:
Even amidst all of the seriousness, Steven Universe is
relentlessly, unabashedly childish. Steven is successful at protecting
Earth not through the use of his powers or through muscle, but by
following many of the simplest rules of a kindergarten class: listen to
others when they’re talking, try to be helpful, share your snacks. It’s
part of what Rebecca Sugar and Steven have in common – why the show is
so relentlessly positive, and so willing to welcome fans with open arms.
And it’s why, when asked if anyone on Steven Universe is truly
evil, she takes a breath and pauses before answering: “It’s a fantasy
show,” she says. "I think it’s a fantasy that no one is truly evil. I
don’t know if that’s true in reality, but it’s certainly true in my
fantasy. Why wouldn’t it be?”.
op has attached a picture of scooby-doo grimacing.]
“how dare a children’s show, written for children, teach children that people can grow and that forgiveness is a good thing”, and other tumblr discourse that’s really uncomfortably calvinist
this is yall
op literally inherited man’s original sin but go off
Steven might actually become friends with the diamonds???
“no one is truly evil”
“i dont know if that’s true in reality”
no offense but im seriously gonna square up with rebecca holy shit
are you fucking kidding me Rebecca sugar?????
Rebecca sugar probably thought that hitler should of been kindly talked to
rebecca sugar is jewish ya piece of shit
Wait but like…. do I need to remind you all that this is a kids show? Of course things are solved like this, the intent is to teach children how to healthily interact with problems. Of course its childish. Steven is a child on a show for children.
rebecca sugar: i want my childrens show to teach kids the value of settling differences by coming to understand and care for eachother. even if that isn’t always possible in reality i think they are important values to try and get across, especially in a childrens fantasy tv show
Zzarchov and I’s Canadian themed adventures are available to purchase in a bundle!
For $9.50 you get two adventures for LotFP and D&D, Sugar Shack Slaughter and Maple Witch of the Beaver Wars!
I wrote mine with an eye for D&D 5e compatibility, so if your 5e game needs some maple ooze moose monsters, a living tree dungeon, and a giant boiling blob monster about to destroy a town, I’ve got a perfect adventure for you!
Good afternoon, folks, and welcome to today’s Eurovision map – it’s about something admittedly niche, but something that truly fascinates me as a linguist. This year, the number of entries not in English rose quite considerably to the highest proportion since 2013, but English remains the dominant language – but what variety?
Many non-native speakers tend to gravitate either towards American English, the most spoken variety, or British English, which has historically enjoyed a certain cachet in popular music, to the extent that many Americans often feigned English accents or at least adopted non-rhoticity when singing, the tendency to not pronounce historical <r> when it follows a vowel and is not immediately followed by another vowel, for instance in dark, car or barbecue.
Whilst there are a number of rhotic British accents (in Scotland, Northern Ireland, but even in some regions of England such as the West Country) and a number of non-rhotic accents in the US (most notably in New England and parts of the south), most learners emulate either the rhotic General American or the non-rhotic Received Pronunciation. Thus, by seeing if singers have mostly rhotic or non-rhotic pronunciations, we can see to a certain extent what variety of English dominates the contest.
Two years ago, my feeling that American English was dominating the contest was backed up with a staggering proportion of singers with rhotic accents, with Eastern Europe and the former USSR, somewhat ironically given the historical context, prone to adopting American English. This year, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, with 16 of the countries singing in English doing so with mostly non-rhotic pronunciations, including, this time, most of Eastern Europe. Interestingly, we even have, in Franka, an example of someone influenced by a non-rhotic American English accent (in this case, that of Boston.)
With 10 rhotic singers, rhotic pronunciations are still strongly represented, and they are interestingly mostly representing nations of Northern Europe, who, two years ago, were rather more likely to send non-rhotic singers. This group include Waylon, avowedly influenced by American genres; Laura Rizzotto, who lives in the states; and Netta, despite her time in predominantly non-rhotic Nigeria. We also have mixed pronunciation in the Equinox group, and two singers – Michael Schulte and Jessika – who swing so rapidly between rhotic and non-rhotic that I had to note them as “intermittently rhotic.”
What I find particularly interesting is the fact that few of the singers are purely rhotic or non-rhotic, with a tendency to not pronounce the r when it follows an unstressed schwa (as in forever) but to pronounce it relatively clearly after a and o. It may well be that [a] new type[/s] of partial rhoticity is/are emerging, independent of English’s major varieties!
Nothing like so called radical feminists and conservatives teaming up to provide a virulently racist, orientalist, and transmisogynistic conspiracy theory all based on the premise that no woman has ever used a gun
🍓🧀 (archive) 