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Joined: Apr 2002
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stranger
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stranger
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The O in vol sounds like the O in Ordinary rather than the A in wAll.
To this Aussie, Ord(inary) and wAll have the same vowel sound.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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To this Aussie, Ord(inary) and wAll have the same vowel sound.
Which only shows the impovershment of using sample words to indicate pronunciation. I for one, have always been terminally confused by pronunciation aids from non-rhotic people that include an r in the example. I mean, how do you pronounce love that you would phonetically [sic] spell it lurv?
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Joined: Jan 2001
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
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Which only shows the impovershment of using sample words to indicate pronunciation.I'd thought about politely asking NicholasW to do an IPA (= International Phonetic Alphabet) tutorial for us but I've concluded it's waaaaay too complicated to do without sound, and the symbols are weird and probably hard to produce without some effort. I found a good website with clickable sounds, though: http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ It was after reading through this page that I realized that trying to get everyone here to learn the IPA would be futile. I for one don't really have the time, even when restricted to the subset of symbols used in English. (I have pored over the relevant section in my linguistics book to no avail; since I never actually took this course but got the book from my brother, I've had no cause to actually memorize the symbols.)
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 320 |
Thanks, Bean, for pointing out the IPA website. I can make good use of it. You are absolutely right that getting into the details of phonetics here would be a lost cause. IMHO that requires a classroom setting with lots of exposure to spoken sounds. Perhaps a good home program would be useful to really motivated people, but certainly not without soundtapes.
I worked for a number of years as a speech/language pathologist, and I discovered that even within the US there were so many variations in vowel sounds that moving from one part of the country to another required a whole new set of guidelines. I have often thought it would be enlightening to do some studying in another English-speaking country, the UK or Oz, say, and chart the rules for vowel production. For example, words that we USns (most of us anyway) pronounce with the short-a sound shift to more of an ah sound in the UK--but then not always. So knowing the symbols is only the first step.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
I receive a good many pleas from wwftd subscibers to provide pronunciations. Even had I the time to develop a guide, I would be loath to do so, for the reasons cited. when I do attempt it I usually just use something that looks good /gud/ to me.
if you want to hear (standard American) pronunciations, AHD and M-W have on-line features -- but you won't find too many obscure words there. :/
()
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks for the link, Bean. It figures they're Norske.
I made a similar list/chart for my masters thesis for the American vowels I've encountered teaching and composing for vocalists. The object was to refine sung vowel sounds as they often obfuscate understanding of the words for the listener. One of the issues approached was that the muscle tension in a vocalists jaw increases dramatically with specific vowels, and to avoid this, vowel pronunciation started "rounding off" (ie. begin sound alike) and lose the minor distinctions that languages (like Norwegian's vowels) have developed.
The only way I could represent the sounds acurately for the student was to listen to the individual speak and find their representative word with the desired sound. This goes a lot toward personalizing success and was an interesting study in dialects and pronunciation. The final *product, however, had to be written with words as I pronounce them, of course.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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As a Zilder, I have to query any list that includes Oz as an English-speaking country.
LLOL!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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they often obfuscate understanding of the words for the listenerCan't put up with that, can we musick?  
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addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2002
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To this Aussie,
Woo hoo! Another Aussie - how are the odds looking now, MaxQ? WELCOME aBoard, Clyde! Glad to have you with us! Oh, and unfortunately, I have no words of wisdom with regard to your comment - I'm just the self-appointed welcoming committee.
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