Re: Phonetics vs. Phonemics

On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at  7:07 AM, Philip Newton wrote:

> On 2/25/06, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:
> > I could really do with a GOOD
> > website offering exact pronunciations of all vowels
> > recognised in the IPA in a number of different contexts.
> > Is there anything like that available anywhere?
>
> That's impossible.
>
> The IPA has a finite number of symbols, but the human speech apparatus
> is capable of producing a far greater range of nuances, so it's not
> possible to say that, for example, [e] is *exactly* this or that
> sound.
It is, and that's exactly what the IPA does. It defines canonical
"platinum-irridium" readings of each of its symbols -- targets, if you will,
from which any given language, dialect or accent differs by a more or less
specified amount. The only officially approved way to learn the IPA correctly
is to learn it directly from one of their "Grand Master"s (or whatever the term
is), who have all been trained on the exact target sounds and articulations by
another previous "Grand Master". The existence of audio tapes, CDs and computer
sound files is a partial substitute for this process, but does not come close
to the level of personal tuition and guidance offered by official training.
Learning the IPA by reading is the third rung, and according to some, it's
quite a step down.

I, like almost the entire population of the planet, fall into that third group. I
do want to obtain the ear (and mouth) of a proper phonetician, but I can't
immediately see any way to make it happen, so I'm going to stick with finding
audio IPA pages on the web, and comparing spectrograms of recordings of myself
with spectrograms of the online recordings.




Paul

Reply