How to learn the IPA (part 1): accelerate your language learning 

😂😂😂

YES!!!

It's been four months. Read this: “Ɪn ðæt dɪˈrekʃən,” ðə Kæt sed, ˈweɪvɪŋ ɪts raɪt pɔː raʊnd, “lɪvz ə ˈHætə: ənd ɪn ðæt dɪrekʃən,” ˈweɪvɪŋ ðiː ˈʌðə pɔː, “lɪvz ə Mɑːtʃ Heə. ˈVɪzɪt ˈaɪðə jʊ laɪk: ðeə bəʊθ mæd.” “Bʌt Aɪ dəʊnt wɒnt tə ɡəʊ əˈmʌŋ mæd ˈpiːpl,” ˈÆlɪs rɪˈmɑːkt. “Əʊ, jʊ kɑːnt help ðæt,” sed ðə Kæt: “wɪər ɔːl mæd hɪə. Aim mæd. Jɔː mæd.” “Haʊ duː jʊ nəʊ Aim mæd?” sed ˈÆlɪs. “Jʊ mʌst biː,” sed ðə Kæt, “ɔː jʊ ˈwʊdnt hæv kʌm hɪə.”

Me right now 😩

Me right now

Playing the flute has helped me with some foreign language sounds because it relies on several odd mouth movements too.

I find that playing the skin flute professionally has improved my glottal stops and rhotics quite a bit.

ikr? This video is 10 months old now- where is part 2? Or are we expected to watch his hour-long livestream to get the vowels? XD

Isn’t it great? And there’s also pronouncing people’s names

@@languagejones6784 Yes, for sure!

I've got a question: if our vocal folds do not vibrate when we whisper, then how was it possible that I can still hear and feel the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds when I whisper them???? I mean, of the only difference between voiced sounds and their voiceless counterparts is the vibration in our vocal folds then they should all sound the same when we whisper, yet they feel and sound different, why is it? Is there anything I'm missing here maybe???

@wagnerjunior6524 My first thought is context. You understand all or most of the whispered message, so your brain is able to fill in the missing pieces when part of the message is NOT clear. Also, if you can still feel the vibration of your voice, maybe you are speaking a little bit louder than a whisper.

@@wagnerjunior6524 I may be a LITTLE late to the party here, but there's also the 'level of explosiveness' for example, or how 'extreme' your fricative is. When whispering, you can make subtle changes between how intense certain letters are. For instance, you can make your 'b' quite soft in terms of how much air you let out in one go, compared to a 'p', where you'd typically use more for clarity. Same goes for 's' and 'z' (although less distinguishably so) or 'd' and 't'. People tend to say d's and z's more gently, and that's why we can often manage to differentiate them, even without context per se.

did you experience any trouble learning chinese and korean together? you know, because they're so similar. i am interested in picking them up both at once, but i am scared of confusing them.

​@maryyammar they are not that similar. Different grammar structures, different vocabulary, different writing system, chinese is tonal and korean is not. Both are pretty difficult though.

@@bigfat4172 They have many cognates, also shared in Japanese.

@@faerie_cakes I'm studying Dutch and German and have studied Italian and Spanish. Pronunciation is the key. If you have very accurate pronunciation, you won't find nearly the number of common words, because you can sort them by sound. Also, although you could use your knowledge of another language during speaking to make yourself understood (and it is super helpful in reading), try to really fill in your vocabulary knowledge first so that you are certain. I have attempted Arabic and try to think of each dialect as a separate language.

​@faerie_cakes Mandarin Chinese, as well as the other Sinitic languages, and Korean are not related to each other at all.... they sound extremely different from each other...... they don't sound anything like each other, and they are not related to each other... Learning Chinese and Korean at the same time would perhaps be like learning English and Arabic at the same time.... Although Korean and Japanese are also not related to each other, I think for someone who has never studied Korean or Japanese, and has never been around many Korean or Japanese speakers, the two languages can sound somewhat similar.....

I always wanted to learn Irish, I love the country, the culture, the music, and the people!

@@nicolao.dos.santos And the language is amazing, too. (And in many ways, Irish is more closely related to Portuguese than English.)

@@nicolao.dos.santosI haven't always, but I do want to learn Irish. I distinctly remember what a white guy said, probably a guy of Irish descent, and probably learning it for the 1st time: "This feels so natural.". I reflect on that often, and assume that languages are strongly influenced by our genetics which influence our comfort levels.

I'm so thrilled with this comment section for the quality of conversations happening here! What a cool thing to share and a perfect use of IPA. I had no idea Gaelic consonants have this feature. I'm excited to go down a youtube rabbit hole listening for this now

I agree about finding comment sections. 🙂@@angelareed225

It’s weird how people esp white people talk about Hangul like it’s some sort of revelation

Hangul is somewhat featural, but it's not like its purpose was to give a universal system. It's completely bound to Korean phonology and phonotactics

​@@Karamazov9because it is a sort of revelation for those unfamiliar with it.

​​@@Karamazov9Hangul is intentionally designed to be easy to learn. It is quite unusual for such a writing system to actually become common. There's also just a really satisfying "click" when a native English speaker learns the rules of Hangul... it looks complicated at first, but is so simple compared with the mess which is English spelling. FWIW: I suck at languages.

@@satanissima white people sometimes have main character syndrome. I think in the broader sense it still speaks to how white people see non whites, like they're a backdrop for us to explore. If it were just a personal revelation to finally understand something, that doesn't have the same racist connotations as like wow nonwhites did something impressive! or as if the white person has made some discovery.

That's what I was thinking!

YES!!!

😂 my channel is 1/3 linguistics, 1/3 Star Trek, and 1/3 throwbacks and R&B

@@languagejones6784 I enjoy all 3 thirds!

It’s a surprisingly popular request!

As a northerner it irritates me when you read 'a' as the 'u' in 'cup'. Madness. Or should I say mudness.

lol

@@Bruh-cg2fk lol?

You’re welcome! I’m excited to continue the series and get into combining everything

Sounds like you’ve been watching Geoff Lindsey’s videos. Or if you haven’t, you should, because that’s something he talks about a lot.

@@artugert I have (that's why that's the example I used haha) but it's not the only example and the difference between what's in reference materials and what's in the actual language is a constant theme in my classes. Seems like Dr. Jones agrees, given one of his latest videos implores people to start listening to real stuff as fast as possible haha. I think analysis can be a useful supplement but the language is ultimately the language. I think the more you spend time in analysis mode using learner materials, the deeper you're putting yourself into a sort of platonic language cave.

@@uchuuseijin Yeah, I think it depends on how you use the IPA. Since there are many accents and ways of pronouncing words, there are many possible transcriptions for any given word. I'm not sure, but I would guess some words could have dozens of possible (close) transcriptions. A person learning English as a second language will need to get a feel for all the various ways a word can be said, otherwise they will understand one accent but not all the others. Of course, for speaking, they will probably be learning one particular accent, such as General American, but even within GA, there are many nuanced differences in people's speech patterns. Eventually, they will have to develop their own preferences and their own voice. So, yeah, I agree. The IPA is a helpful tool for beginners in a language to understand what is actually going on when a particular sound is articulated, but it can't be relied upon for a perfectly accurate representation of speech. Eventually, you need to rely on your own ears and your own tongue, lots of practice and (at a more advanced level) perhaps a bit of intuition.

I was trying to save all the diacritics for the third video, to keep it as simple as possible at the start. I’m definitely excited about getting to those, and same for the vowels (Australian “no” will be involved)

@@languagejones6784, yeah, nah, really, mate?

@@Tim_Sviridov i think "australian no" probably refers to how some australians say "no" that sounds to some people as "naur"

@@notwithouttext quoi? Nah, mate. Nobody here says it with an r at the end. Or for that matter, the "нау" part. (And yes, I get that that you were trying to write "nah". I am making fun of English's inability to spell.)

@@Tim_Sviridov no, i DO mean naur, with a distinct r-sounding approximant at the end. only a few young australians say it, though, and only in some regions. so maybe nobody THERE but there are some. geoff lindsey has a good video about why some australians say naur

I will eventually make a shorter video on it, but the editing nearly killed me. And this is one topic I can't outsource editing on.

We’re gonna have so much fun with that! I LOVE the vowels. There are sounds in French that I had to learn by triangulation…literally getting height/backness/and rounding one at a time by using other vowels I know, and then dialing it in once I was in the neighborhood. I still have an accent but it’s a LOT better. Listen and repeat wasn’t gonna cut it

And for example in english how do u learn and memorize the pronunciation of each diphthong, vowel, and consonant, for every word?

Me too!

I realized at a certain point I can’t make the videos I want to in the future without it, andI shouldn’t just keep telling people to learn it on their own

There’s so much I wanted to discuss that I need this for first! Can’t get to historical change without distinctive features, can’t do distinctive features without IPA

A wise friend of mine always encourages me to use simpler words wherever possible - “If you can’t explain it without jargon, you don’t really understand it”

Sorry, I know you sound completely crazy. When I was learning the IPA, I used to walk home from work muttering the letters to myself. I remember learning ʁ and sounding like I was gargling. All the neighbours hated how their dogs started howling as I came by

You just reminded me: I once went to see Don Ringe, who teaches historical linguistics, in his office. When I got there, he was pacing back and forth reading some manner of incantation in Akkadian. I slowly backed away.

no WAY he didn't gives the next part???

12:45 less common sounds (from perspective of a native English speaker)

13:23 bilabials 14:14 labiodental 15:07 dental 15:43 Alveolar 16:23 postalveolar 16:36 retroflex 17:12 palatal 18:19 palatal lateral approximate like λ in χιλιόμετρα 18:23 velar 19:07 uvular 19:50 pharyngeal 20:16 glotal

@@dianagumas3777 sheesh okay diana go off