NOTES Summary Spelling ➔ / Xspelin / These ➔ / Diz / Judge ➔ / Juj / Such ➔ / Suts / Eksplcxneiscn

THEME NOTES

The International Phonetic Alphabet

Summary

There is a special system of symbols called IPA for transcribing human speech. Many of the symbols look like the familiar letters of the Roman alphabet which we use. Some symbols like q and J may be unfamiliar. Here are some examples of IPA transcription/

spelling ➔ / xspelIN / these ➔ / Diz / judge ➔ / juj / such ➔ / sutS / ➔ C explanation / xeksplCxnEIS n /

This theme will teach: • that representing the speech sounds of English is much more difﬁcult than simply spelling the words to represent their meaning; • that linguists use a special system of symbols called IPA when they are representing the pronunciation of words; • that there is a difference between phonetics and phonology; • that phonetics is for pronunciation and does not use alphabetic letters; spelling, however, is for meaning which it represents using combinations of letters of the alphabet.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 1 Preparing for this theme NOTES It is essential that, before beginning to teach this theme, you should have read Chapters F and G of The User’s self-Training Manual. The subject of real phonetics is difﬁcult and demanding. Given, however, the great deal of misinformation circulating in educational circles both about the phonetic structure of English and the (tenuous) relationship between English spelling and phonetics, any teacher of spelling at any stage just has to have at least a basic grasp of real phonetics, and its essential distinction from phonology. The best way to give yourself a good grounding in phonetics, phonology and the crucial distinction between the two is to attend a Residential Real Spelling Hexameron.

• Spelling and pronunciation Even with reasonably conﬁdent spellers you cannot emphasise often enough that the English spelling system neither does take great note of pronunciation, nor can it do so with any consistency. It is no accident of history that the system has evolved in this way. The very nature of English makes it practically impossible to represent in letters the pronunciation of words with any consistency that makes sense.

➪ We produce more phones in spoken words than are needed to ﬁx what words mean.

Spelling often does not need to represent pronunciation The English spelling system deals with elements of pronunciation only when all other priorities of meaning, relationship and structure have been satisﬁed.

➪ Only discrete segments of speech which are capable of affecting meaning are given any attention in the spelling system.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 2 When spelling does take note of some elements of pronunciation it is not operating phonetics. Spelling does, however, take note of phonology. NOTES

• Deﬁning phonetics Phonetics is the academic study of the physical acoustics of any speech act, and is concerned exclusively with the physiological nature of their articulation. Phonetics is not concerned with what speech sounds might mean. The units of phonetics are ‘phones’, isolated and invariable units of human speech activity irrespective of any representation or distinction of meaning. ➪ Alphabetic letters are no part of phonetics. Phones can only be represented by IPA symbols, not letters.

It is a strict phonetic convention that a single phone is represented by a single IPA symbol: one symbol — one phone.

• Deﬁning phonology Distinct from phonetics, phonology is the study of how elements of pronunciation relate to meaning and how those minimal contrastive sounds-for-meaning, called ‘phonemes’, are represented in writing by ‘graphemes’. ➪ Phonetics represents phones by IPA symbols only. Spelling represents phonemes by letter-based graphemes.

These are the modalities of phonology in spelling. • Starting with a phoneme, we can build a repertoire of different graphemes which are available to represent it. — A single phoneme may contain more than one phone, and may have more than one pronunciation. — Not all the phones in a word’s pronunciation are necessarily part of a phoneme. • Starting with a grapheme, we can build a repertoire of the phonemes which it can represent. — The graphemes are a limited set of one, two- or three-letter strings.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 3 • There are ‘circumstances’ governing the choice of grapheme which help us to choose between different spelling possibilities. NOTES The mature speller knows that English spelling takes account of phonology: it is not interested in phonetics.

• The use of square, slash and angle brackets Linguistics uses established signs to indicate whether it is referring to phones, phonemes or the written spelling of words.

6G (i) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying

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phonetic information ��

graphemic information ��

phonological information ��

To show that what is being referred to is a spelling, not necessarily concerned with any aspect of pronunciation, the letters are enclosed in angle brackets — < >. So < chain > is just the written word. It has three graphemes: 1 the consonant digraph < ch >; 2 the vowel digraph < ai >; 3 the single-letter consonant grapheme < n >. To represent the constituent phones of a word’s pronunciation with no reference to anything to do with meaning, then the symbols are enclosed in square brackets. So [tSeIn] represents just the pronunciation of the word. There are ﬁve IPA symbols, so the pronunciation of < chain > has ﬁve phones.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 4 To represent the phonemes that construct the meaning of < age >, the symbols are enclosed in slash brackets — / tSeIn /. Beware, though; < age > has only NOTES three phonemes: 1 the two-phone consonant cluster phoneme / tS /; 2 the two-phone vowel glide ‘long < a >’ phoneme / eI /; 3 the single-phone consonant phoneme / n /.

Ω Asking students to count ‘sounds’ is highly ambiguous: do you mean phones, or do you mean phonemes? The answer will frequently be different!

• Base words can change pronunciation with affixes The word < no > usually rhymes with < low >, but in the compound word < nothing > its pronunciation is different, like the first two letters in < nut >. The base < know > rhymes with < slow >, but the rhyme is lost when it combines with the suffix <-ledge > to form < knowledge >. Here are more simple examples from British English of the way in which the same base can have different pronunciations in different spoken contexts. • The base < do > rhymes with < coo >, but with the suffixes <-es > or <-ne > (as in < does > and < done >) the results rhyme with < fuzz > and < bun >. • In the word < house > the final [ s ] becomes [ z ] when you add the plural suffix, giving the pronunciation [ haOzIz]. • The base < clean > changes its pronunciation when you add the suffixes <-ly > and <-ness > to form < cleanliness >.

Ω If English spelling chased pronunciation around in all its variations rather than represented meaning we would have an inconsistent writing system. Spelling would become more complicated, not less.

We would have the absurd situation of a single word needing to be spelled in different ways depending on the context in which it was being spoken, who was speaking and when it was being spoken.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 5 Ω The greatest failing of a supposedly ‘phonetic’ spelling NOTES system for everyday English writing would be that it could have little consistency as far as meaning is concerned.

Your students might like to revisit examples of the phonetic elasticity of English that they will have already met. Here are two of them: the sufﬁx <-ed > (Kit K Theme H, Kit 4 Theme G); the grapheme < ea > (Kit 3 Theme D).

The main theme Here’s one way you could introduce the theme: “The way we spell English words is not that much to do with what we think they sound like when we pronounce them. The scientiﬁc study of language called ‘linguistics’ has a way of representing just the elements of pronunciation. There is a special set of signs that is used in linguistics to represent just pronunciation. It is called ‘The IPA (the initials of the International Phonetic Association), and we are going to learn a little about it and how to understand it.

Ω Transcribing speech is extremely difﬁcult. Don’t expect to be able to do it easily!

You are going to ﬁnd out that real spelling is actually much easier than relying ﬁrst on so-called sound!”

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 6 • IPA—a way of representing all the segments of speech NOTES Phoneticians are not interested in spelling, so letters are not appropriate for recording elements of speech. Phoneticians need a different symbol system. They need hundreds of distinct symbols to accommodate the wide variety of sounds made by the human voice.

• Spelling is one thing—pronunciation is another Remind your students of the good news about English spelling.

¥ The fact that English spelling is mainly concerned with the meaning and sense of words makes spelling much easier than trying to represent all the voice ‘sounds’ that we make when speaking.

Remind your students of some of the main points of the spelling system. • Words or parts of words that mean the same are spelled the same, even if they are pronounced differently. Put another way, if the meaning stays the same, the spelling stays the same, even if the pronunciation (as often happens in English) changes. examples: please ➔ pleasant act ➔ action • Spelling indicates speech sounds that are present in a word’s family, even if that speech sound isn’t present in all the individual words of that family. examples: sign ➔ signal soften ➔ softer • Because of the homophone principle the spelling system needs different ways of representing the same pronunciation. example: mist & missed side & sighed ruff & rough If we only represented pronunciation: • there would be no way of distinguishing meaning; • different speakers would represent words in writing in different ways, depending on their accent; • the same word would have different spellings depending on the spoken context in which it occurred.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 7 • The International Phonetic Alphabet NOTES The International Phonetic Association’s IPA symbols are used in the scientiﬁc study of language and languages called ‘linguistics’.

You have already seen IPA! Tell your students that in any good dictionary they must have already seen the symbols of the IPA, though they may not have taken much notice of them. Show them this OHP projection of the beginnings of three standard dictionary entries. In these examples the IPA symbols are enclosed in square brackets—[ ].

6G (ii) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying

knowledge [ xn@lIj ] n. 1. the facts…

something [ xsumqIN ] pron. 1. an unspecified…

shadow [ xSAdCO ] n. 1. a dark…

NOTES • Students should already be familiar with the IPA symbol [ S ]. Here are some further examples of its use. ship ➔ / SIp / ﬁsh ➔ / fIS / wishes ➔ / wISIz /

• The symbol [ q ] represents the voiceless < th >. thug ➔ / qug / death ➔ / deq / • There is also a voiced phone represented by < th > — as in < that >. It is a different phone so it needs a different phonetic symbol— [ D ]. Here are a couple of examples. that ➔ / DAt / breathe ➔ / briD / Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 8 IPA symbols for consonant phones NOTES Use the following OHP Transparency to introduce the IPA consonant symbols to your students. Most of the consonant phones of English are represented. Make sure that they understand that there can only be one phone represented by each symbol! Help your students to identify them.

6G (iii) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying

Consonant phones: b d f g h k l m n p

r s t v z q S D J N

NOTES • The symbol [ J ] represents a phone that is never found at the beginning of an English word. The phoneme / J / is usually represented by < s >, as in < pleasure > and < vision >. • The phoneme / N / is the one represented by < ng > at the end of < sing >. Beware! There is no [ g ] at the end of that word as it stands — it is pronounced / sIN / — three phones — and not /*sINg /— four phones. Contrast this with < sink > which does have four phones— / sINk /.

IPA symbols for vowel phones The symbols for vowel phones are more complex. Although there are only six vowel letters in spelling there are about sixteen vowel phones in English plus two ‘semi-vowels’. Use the following OHP Transparency of the IPA symbols for most of the English vowel phones to introduce them to your students.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 9 6G (iv) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying NOTES Vowel phones: A Z a I e E C F i I @ o O U u C

Semi-vowels: w y

NOTES • The colon [ : ] indicates that the pronunciation of the phone is lengthened in time while changing nothing in its quality. • The symbol [ y ] is the semi-vowel represented by the initial < y > in < yes >. The phones— isolated and invariable units of voice activity— are the raw material of speech only. In themselves they have no necessary connection with what a pronunciation might mean. When it comes to the speech-to-meaning dimension we are dealing with phonEMES—the structural units of meaningful pronunciation. Many of the phonemes of English are composed of just one phone, but there are several English phonemes that are composed of two, three or even more phones. There is a parallel here with the letter—grapheme relationship. Many of the graphemes of English are composed of just one letter, but there are many English graphemes that are composed of two or three letters.

➪ Graphemes are composed of letters. Phonemes are composed of phones.

• The phonemes of English It is just not true to say that the English phoneme is “one sound”. True, the majority of English phonemes are composed of just one phone, but there are several single phonemes that are composed of two or more phones.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 10 Consonant cluster phonemes NOTES In the introduction to this Theme we looked at the word spelled < chain >. It begins with the digraph < ch > which represents just one phoneme: /tS /. It is represented by two IPA symbols. Why? Because it is a cluster of two phones.

– DETECTIVE WORK: identifying the phones in /tS / 1 Ask your students to pronounce the initial phoneme of < chain > several times, and check that they are really saying /tS /, not “chuh”. 2 Ask them to feel for themselves what the tip of the tongue is doing as this phoneme is pronounced: — at the onset of the phoneme the tip of the tongue is in contact with the gum ridge behind the upper teeth, exactly as we pronounce [ t ]; — the tip of the tongue immediately moves back from the gum ridge to the position it is in to pronounce [ S ]. 3 They have proved for themselves that this phoneme is a ‘cluster’ of the two phones [ t ] and [ S ]. That is why this single phoneme is /tS / in IPA. Other consonant phonemes that are two-phone clusters are /j /, /ks / and /gz /. They occur in these words. < just > ➔ /just / < fox > ➔ /f@ks / < exact > ➔ /egzakt /

➪ Competent real spellers will deal comfortably with the question, “How many phones are there in such-and-such a phoneme?”

The vowel phonemes of English It is when you come to deal with the vowel phonemes that you realize the limits and ambiguities of talking simply of ‘sounds’. In the spelling system there are only six vowel letters, but there are anything up to twenty vowel phonemes in spoken English and about half of the English vowel phonemes consist of two or more phones!

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 11 You can illustrate this to your students with an extract from the writing of a very young student who has only been taught to spell ‘phonetically’. Make an OHP NOTES copy of the text and show it to your students. They are going to look especially at the way the writer has represented the words < my > and < hide >.

6G (v) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying

Ask your students to suggest why this writer spelled < my > as < *MAY > and < hide > as < *HAYD >. The writer has represented exactly the pronunciation of those two words! Phonetically they are / maI / and / haId /. The ‘long’ < i > is, certainly, a single phoneme of English, but it is a ‘glide’ of two vowel phones! ➪ The single phoneme /aI/ has two phones! Calling it “A” sound is not just misleading; it is also false.

– DETECTIVE WORK: identifying the phones in ‘long < a >’ You can prove that there are two phones in this ‘long < a >’ vowel by putting your hand against your lower jaw and saying the ‘long < i >’ out loud. You will feel your jaw move upwards as you ‘glide’ from the ﬁrst phone [ a ] to the following [ I ]. The young writer of the OHP text hears ‘sounds’ only too well, and it is precisely the instruction to spell words as they are supposed to ‘sound’ that has caused her to produce the misspellings < *mai > and < *haid >. They are phonetic ‘spellings’, and that is why they are wrong. Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 12 Ω Spelling is not ‘phonetic’. It is phonological. NOTES

You could use the same ‘jaw’ test for the other ‘long’ vowel sounds. Only the ‘long < e >’ is NOT a glide of two phones! Here are the IPA transcriptions of the ﬁve ‘long’ vowel phonemes. Spend a little time investigating and testing them with your students. / EI / / i / / aI / / CO / / yU /

Spoken English is particularly rich in vowel phonemes and there are many more than just these. Here is an OHP transparency to show your students; it will give them an idea of how many vowel phonemes English actually has.

6G (vi) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying Vowel phonemes Monophthongs Semi-vowels A cat - acting (‘pure’ vowels) of Received Z cart - calm - heart w win - why e hen - bread y yes Pronunciation I bin - women - washes - dyslexic of British English i eat - scene - protein - believe - magazine @ pot - watch o: law - sort - ough t - caution - war O look - put U boot - flute - true - flew - soup u but - other - d ouble F bird - fur - heard - her - word - myrtle - journal Triphthongs C a go - p otato - v ariety - discipline - photography (three-phone glides) aIC fire - tyre WC flour - tower eI say - main - eight - they - late - straight - great yOC cure - ewer aI buy - high - lie - cry oI toy - point clout - clown (in Scottish and some W American Englishes these CO boat - cope - flow - toe - though are four-phone phonemes) IC beer - fear - pier r EC care - there - wear aIC fire r OC dour - poor Diphthongs WC flour - tower yU use - pure (two-phone glides) yOCr cure - ewer

Without going through it in too much detail, you should touch on these points. • Only half of the vowel phonemes are ‘monophthongs’ — phonemes that consist of only one phone. The other half are ‘glides’ of more than one phone. This is why talking of vowels as “A sound” can be ambiguous and misleading.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 13 • The most frequent phoneme in English is the shewa / C /, yet it has no speciﬁc grapheme to represent it. NOTES

• Vowels in spelling You should make these two fundamental points. • Most of the vowel graphemes can represent two or more different phonemes. For example: the vowel grapheme < a > can represent the phonemes /A/ (as in < bag >), /eI/ (as in < basin >), /Z/ (as in the British pronunciation of < bath >), and the shewa /C/ (as in < ago >), • Many phonemes can be represented by more than one grapheme. For example: the phoneme /aI/ can be represented by the graphemes < i > (as in < bicycle >), < i e> (as in < die >), < igh > (as in < high >), < y > (as in < by >), < ye > (as in < dye >), and < uy > (as in < buy >).

The shewa — most frequent phoneme of English The neutral vowel or shewa / C / is a integral and essential part of normal everyday spoken English. Indeed, it is the most common vowel phoneme in the language. Here are just a few words with the position of the shewa marked.

ago upon separate deﬁni te introduce banana

Vowel phonemes in unstressed syllables usually neutralize to the shewa /C/. When this happens, the spelling retains the grapheme that represented the original phoneme when it had the stress. The spelling of the shewa can only be determined by comparison with the words that are related to it in meaning and in structure.

Ω Mispronouncing words to avoid the shewa is to cease to speak normal English!

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 14 • First IPA transcriptions NOTES Your students should now be ready for their ﬁrst attempts to transcribe IPA into real spellings. Show them this OHP of very basic words in IPA. Your job is to decide what each of the words is and to write it out as a regularly spelled word.

6G (vii) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying

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In case you need them, here are the transcriptions of the words given. cat father / farther (British English) shine make chair fairy thief chips nearest lodge story boys/buoys look house you / ewe / yew cutting poor ago

• Homophones to transcribe from IPA To reinforce the fact that pronunciation alone cannot always distinguish meaning give your students this exercise in transcribing homophones. You cannot tell, just from the IPA, what each of the words means. Only the spelling will tell you that. Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 15 6G (viii) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying NOTES Transcribe these words / saId / / siz / into real spellings.

/ weIz / / saIz / Each of them is a homophone, so you will need to find more than / hiCr / / maInd / one spelling for each. / yU / / weI / / tU / / aI / Write our your results like this: / DECr / / qrU / / saId / ➔ side ➔ sighed / ClWd / / tSUz / / peIst / / pis /

• More advanced transcriptions You may decide at this point that your students have had a sufﬁciently useful introduction to IPA and transcribing pronunciation alone and, not without a sigh of relief, go back to the much less complicated world of real spelling. But if you—or, more likely, your students—want to go further, there are more exercises you can amuse and bemuse yourself with.

The stress mark If you need to revisit the concept of ‘stress’ in an English word you can ﬁnd material in Kit 4 Theme A . The stress could be on any spoken syllable in an English word. IPA needs a way of marking where it is. Stress in an IPA transcription is shown by a short vertical line [ x ] placed at the start of the syllable that is stressed. For example, here are the two possible pronunciations of the words that are spelled < content > and < refuse >.

/ kCn x tent / or / xk@ntent / / rI x fyUz / or / xrefyUs / Here are some phonetic transcriptions to share with your students.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 16 Write only the IPA transcriptions on your board and ask your students to help you to pronounce each in turn, paying special attention to the position of the stress. NOTES When you have managed to do that—and make sense!— write the transcription in real spelling. / xneISCn / / xjujmCnt / / xcFcIz / / aIxdiCl / / xspelINzxizI /

/ xhWC xyU tCxdeI / / xmECrI xhAdC xlItCl xlAm / / xDAt x@ksteIl xsupIzdIxlISCs / / DECz xsumqIN x@nDE xtelIvIJCn tCxm@reO xnaIt /

In case you need them, here are the transcriptions. nation judge churches ideal spelling’s easy how are you today? Mary had a little lamb that oxtail soup is delicious there’s something on the television tomorrow night All of those transcriptions were of Standard British English. Transcriptions of American and British English can be different in some cases. r For instance, < leisure > will be /xleJC/ in British English but /xliJC / in American English. The word < laboratory > will be either /lCxb@rCtrI/ or xlAbrCto:rI/ depending on whose English we are transcribing.

• IPA in French primary schools Share with your students the fact that in some non-English education systems the IPA symbols have a part in teaching and learning from an early stage. Children in French primary schools learn that if you need to talk just about pronunciation, then you use the IPA symbols. Right from the start they know the crucially important principle that spelling is one thing, but pronunciation is another. Here is a typical page that a lower primary pupil might be seeing in France.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 17 6G (ix) OHP TRANSPARENCY for photocopying NOTES

The phonemes of French are different from English. That accounts for some signs on this page that are not used for English. You might like to organize a debate in your class as to whether the IPA should be taught early on in English-speaking schools too.

Summary • Representing pronunciation is not the same as spelling. • Spelling represents sense and meaning. • Phonetics is the study of the physics of human speech alone; it is not interested in what speech means.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 18 • The single phonetic units of human speech are called phones and the symbols for them are enclosed in square brackets [ ]. NOTES • Phonology is concerned only with segments of pronunciation which build and distinguish meaning; it ignores phones if they are not part of what establishes the meaning of a word. • The phonological units of pronunciation are called phonemes and the symbols for them are enclosed in slash brackets / /. • A phoneme may be a glide or cluster of two or more phones. • Phonemes are represented in spelling by graphemes, a limited set of one-, two or three letters. • The science of linguistics uses the symbols of The International Phonetic Association (IPA) to represent phones and phonemes. There is a strict convention of one symbol — one phone.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 19 6G (i) OHPNOTES TRANSPARENCY

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phonetic information ��

graphemic information ��

phonological information ��

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 20 6G (ii) OHP TRANSPARENCY NOTES

knowledge [ xn@lIj ] n. 1. the facts… something [ xsumqIN ] pron. 1. an unspecified… shadow [ xSAdCO ] n. 1. a dark…

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 21 6G (iii) OHP TRANSPARENCY NOTES

Consonant phones: b d f g h k l m n p r s t v z q S D J N

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 22 6G (iv) OHP TRANSPARENCY NOTES

Vowel phones: A Z a I e E C F i I @ o O U u C

Semi-vowels: w y

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 23 6G (v) OHP TRANSPARENCY NOTES

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 24 6G (vi) OHP TRANSPARENCY NOTES

Vowel phonemes Monophthongs Semi-vowels A cat - acting (‘pure’ vowels) of Received Z cart - calm - heart w win - why e hen - bread y yes Pronunciation I bin - women - washes - dyslexic of British English i eat - scene - protein - believe - magazine @ pot - watch o: law - sort - ough t - caution - war O look - put U boot - flute - true - flew - soup u but - other - d ouble F bird - fur - heard - her - word - myrtle - journal Triphthongs C a go - p otato - v ariety - discipline - photography (three-phone glides) aIC fire - tyre WC flour - tower eI say - main - eight - they - late - straight - great yOC cure - ewer aI buy - high - lie - cry oI toy - point clout - clown (in Scottish and some W American Englishes these CO boat - cope - flow - toe - though are four-phone phonemes) beer - fear - pier IC r EC care - there - wear aIC fire r OC dour - poor Diphthongs WC flour - tower yU use - pure (two-phone glides) yOCr cure - ewer

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 25 6G (vii) OHP TRANSPARENCY 4A (iv) WORD SUMS NOTESand FLOW CHART

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Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 26 6G (viii) WORD BANK NOTES

Transcribe these words / saId / / siz / into real spellings.

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 27 6G (ix) OHP TRANSPARENCY NOTES

Kit 6 G Teaching Notes: page 28