…When learners of English are first introduced to phonetic symbols, they are in effect learning to *read* them — mapping a new set of characters onto sounds they approximate from their native language, effectively swapping one set of letters for another without ever fully closing the gap to sound. The result is that the transcription ends up just as disconnected from actual pronunciation as the original spelling. […]
…It is precisely the reduction of function words to their weak forms that creates the unstressed “valleys” between the stressed content words — and the result is the characteristic **iambic pulse** of English: the da-DUM da-DUM pattern that underlies both everyday conversation and, not coincidentally, the blank verse of Shakespeare. When learners avoid weak forms and pronounce every word at full strength, they produce speech that sounds halting and foreign to a native ear, even if every individual sound is perfectly correct. Getting weak forms right is, in this sense, the single most impactful thing you can do for your spoken English after getting the individual phonemes in order. […]
Although the use of International Phonetic Alphabet gained significant momentum during recent decades, it still raises a lot of questions, especially among the learners of English as a foreign language. Most of the confusion stems from the minor differences between transcriptions found in different dictionaries. In an attempt to clear this up we want to take a quick look at the history of the International Phonetic Alphabet, […]
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