Phonetics/Phonology students?

[Il Morto Che Parla]

Anyone? Especially experts in British pronunciation...

 

[five sounds]

i've taken a few phonetics/phonology courses, and know a fair amount on the subject. what are you looking for?

 

[Il Morto Che Parla]

Cool! I love the subject, but I didn't ever study it formally! Also I like Daft Punk

I am not sure if this question makes sense but is there a list of possible sounds in English and recordings of them? Also information on how they are produced?

 

[five sounds]

Cool! I love the subject, but I didn't ever study it formally! Also I like Daft Punk

I am not sure if this question makes sense but is there a list of possible sounds in English and recordings of them? Also information on how they are produced?

well,

i also really love the subject. have you ever heard of IPA (international phonetic alphabet)?

 

[prplchknz]

I thought this was gonna be the phonetics, that kids learn to read with. but that would have been stupid to make a thread about. there's not any 2nd/3rd graders posting, at least I hope not.

 

[Il Morto Che Parla]

well,

i also really love the subject. have you ever heard of IPA (international phonetic alphabet)?

I have heard of it, but I cannot read it...

A thing I have noticed in Britain is, they do not nasalize, like the words come from the mouth, almost "falling" out of the mouth, with very little effort. like they have a "potato in the mouth". but I am not sure if there is any theoretical concept to explain this, like to say, that the tongue/mouth/voice have a certain position.

For example in Spanish it is quite easy - you have to learn the "erre" (rolled r). If you speak with this, the rest of the pronunciation comes as a result, because you have to have your tongue in a certain position and to speak in a certain "tone" (is that the right word?) in order to be always ready to pronounce this.

It is why when a child is learning to speak, it is assumed that when they can say the "erre", the rest of their pronunciation is correct, and that this is the last thing they learn to say.

So my question, is there a similar "short-hand" way in British English, to learn the basics of the pronunciation?

 

[Redbone]

I don't think so. They need better programs to teach this...it would be a really good way to learn a language because it can be hard because of the unfamiliar mouth, tongue movement/placement.

I know it's not really helpful to you but you may be interested in knowing there are programs for American English that have dyslexia that directly teach phonemic awareness.

http://www.lindamoodbell.com/programs/lips.html

The program is based on developing the sensory-cognitive function of phonemic awareness. It's really cool because it teaches placement of mouths, lips, etc. So, for example people that cannot hear the difference between short "e" and "i" learn it through seeing/touching how the mouth placement is for the two. It would be really cool if they could make foreign language instruction videos teaching this.

 

[tkae.]

You'll pretty much want to look for Linguistics classes/programs instead of Phonetics. Phonetics is a smaller part of Linguistics, sort of like how Organic Chemistry is a smaller part of Chemistry.

But yeah, I'd be amazed if you found an undergraduate phonetics program.

Alternatively, you might be wanting to look for speech therapy, which uses phonetics much more extensively than linguistics does. Or philology, but I have no idea what track that would go on. It uses both language and linguistics classes, I'd guess.

My History of the English Language class studied phonetics, but so did my Linguistics class. Both of them about the same amount, going into a bit more detail in the Linguistics class. So I'd say you should start looking there.

 

[RDF]

I have heard of it, but I cannot read it...

A thing I have noticed in Britain is, they do not nasalize, like the words come from the mouth, almost "falling" out of the mouth, with very little effort. like they have a "potato in the mouth". but I am not sure if there is any theoretical concept to explain this, like to say, that the tongue/mouth/voice have a certain position.

For example in Spanish it is quite easy - you have to learn the "erre" (rolled r). If you speak with this, the rest of the pronunciation comes as a result, because you have to have your tongue in a certain position and to speak in a certain "tone" (is that the right word?) in order to be always ready to pronounce this.

It is why when a child is learning to speak, it is assumed that when they can say the "erre", the rest of their pronunciation is correct, and that this is the last thing they learn to say.

So my question, is there a similar "short-hand" way in British English, to learn the basics of the pronunciation?

I took a Russian Linguistics class in my last year of Russian in college, and it provided a lot of this kind of info. Every sound could be defined in terms of a mouth formation and how air got pushed through: Open front rounded vowels, closed front rounded vowels, glottal stop, fricatives, sibilants, etc.

I don't remember much of the specifics after all this time, but the material actually was great for parsing accents and getting them perfect. For example, when English speakers pronounce the letter "O", they end it with a "W" sound: That is, they close their mouth and purse their lips at the end of the "O". By comparison, when Russian speakers pronounce the letter "O", they put the closed "W" sound at the start of the "O" and open their mouth wider at the end of the "O".

Kind of fun if you're into Si-ing to death the nature of spoken language. See this list of phonetics subjects for an idea of how intricate it can get: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_phonetics_articles

You'll pretty much want to look for Linguistics classes/programs instead of Phonetics. Phonetics is a smaller part of Linguistics, sort of like how Organic Chemistry is a smaller part of Chemistry.

But yeah, I'd be amazed if you found an undergraduate phonetics program.

Alternatively, you might be wanting to look for speech therapy, which uses phonetics much more extensively than linguistics does. Or philology, but I have no idea what track that would go on. It uses both language and linguistics classes, I'd guess.

My History of the English Language class studied phonetics, but so did my Linguistics class. Both of them about the same amount, going into a bit more detail in the Linguistics class. So I'd say you should start looking there.

Yes, great advice.