IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet

[Nanoq]

Hi! smile

Since most of you guys in this Guild likes conlanging, I thought it'd be good to make this thread. It's about the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). The IPA is a great way to explain stuff that has anything to do with phonology, like pronounciation and stuff. 3nodding

It's tricky to explain pronounciation by writing, especially in English. That's why the IPA was invented. The IPA has one character for each sound; vowels, consonants, everything, which makes it a lot easier to explain pronounciation. biggrin

Example:
The word bit would be written [bɪt]*, while the word bite would be written [bait]. The 'i's in these words are pronounced very differently, which is why they are written very differently with the IPA. In IPA, every word is written the way it's pronounced, and that is what makes it so smart. ^^

This is a very rough explanation of the IPA, so I suggest you go visit my friend Wikipedia for more information. I learned most of the IPA in school, but I often go here for further education, so to speak. smile

Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA

If you have any questions, feel free to post them in here.

Have fun! 4laugh

* Yes, that's an 'i' whithout the dot, called 'dotless i'. And yeah, you write the IPA words within brackets [ ] to avoid confusion with other words.  

[Eccentric Iconoclast]

I'm learning the IPA. surprised

[sɔ fɑɹ ɪt siːmz veɹi juːsfəl], even though I wish I had a teacher or something. gonk  

[Xeigrich]

I was thinking of making this same thread several days ago, but I don't understand the IPA completely.

Mostly, I can't seem to grasp the way they describe vowels (open, front, etc).

It's really helping me develop a sound-based alphabet, though.  

[Domerin Thompson]

I can't even see half the letters on this laptop. They just turn out as squares.  

[Hawk_McKrakken]

Ditto.  

[Hermonie Urameshi]

That would really help me. If i knew how to use it when explaining....

 

[Dave]

Domerin Thompson

I can't even see half the letters on this laptop. They just turn out as squares.

Hawk_McKrakken

Ditto.

Are you guys using IE?

If so, try Firefox.  

[Hermonie Urameshi]

Dave

Domerin Thompson

I can't even see half the letters on this laptop. They just turn out as squares.

Hawk_McKrakken

Ditto.

Are you guys using IE?

If so, try Firefox.

Our laptop doesn't have the font for whatever script it uses. It's not the browser and we don't even have firefox on the laptop. I can't even see a lot of scripts on this computer and we have all of the fonts from the windows disc downloaded on it.

 

[Forgedawn]

If I could hear it, it'd work a lot better for me. Phonetic alphabet makes lots of sense...

But the thing with it is that the spoken language will often differ (ie, region specific words/accents, etc), and that's why fixing teh English spelling never works...

IPA is awesome because you apply it to the language, which has its own spelling rules that make sense to the native speaker (yay for reading a friend's college linguistics notes biggrin ). If it were used instead, it would change from group to group as well gonk  

[Xeigrich]

Don't you have to enable Unicode to see the symbols used by the IPA? I can see them fine, and I've got my FireFox set to Unicode.

Someone had linked to this site: http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm.
It breaks down the English sounds in the IPA, but it doesn't cover sounds not in English. They've got recorded examples of the sounds, and it helped me understand the IPA a little better. I forget who posted this and where, but I relinked it here for reference. sweatdrop  

[DavidGemmell]

I can see all the letters fine on the library computers, but if I save them and try to look at them at home they turn into squares... which is odd, because it handles other unicode stuff just fine. neutral  

[Hawk_McKrakken]

I can't even see Asian symbols. If it's linked in any way with this problem, it just means I gotta install the language packs for Windows XP.