 Welcome! The in-class meeting that introduces the topic phonetic transcription requires that students understand the main principles of articulatory phonetics and the concept of the phoneme. If students do not feel confident in any of these areas, we recommend to visit the respective e-learning units either on the virtual linguistics campus, or visit our YouTube channel and the e-lectures about phonetics and the two e-lectures about the phoneme. This background knowledge is necessary for the goals of this in-class meeting. The particular prerequisite for this in-class meeting is that students have worked through the unit phonetic transcription, including the two e-lectures, phonetic transcription 1 and 2. Before we start with the practical, as usual, about 25% of the in-class time should be reserved for questions and for a general repetition of difficult topics. In particular, I suggest to clarify the central approaches towards the phoneme. In doing this, and we will illustrate this now, I will be supported by another of my first-term students, Teresa. So, Teresa will with me illustrate what we did in this particular in-class meeting. So, Teresa, let's look at the central approaches towards the phoneme first. Now, here you see three guys. They have something to do with the phoneme. Who are they? The first one is Nicolae Troubetzkoi. Troubetzkoi, okay. Troubetzkoi, the second. The one in the middle is Daniel Jones. Yes, very good. So, I'm just writing down Jones. And the last one, relatively unknown guy. The cartonné. Yeah, the cartonné, bourgeois, the cartonné. Okay. Well, and what have they got to do with the phoneme? Troubetzkoi defined the functional view. Very good. Jones, the physical. Good. And the cartonné, the psychological view. Yes, the three views of the phoneme. So, let's illustrate these three views of the phoneme. Now, here you see the typical organization of the phoneme in terms of Daniel Jones' physical approach. What is a phoneme here? It's the abstract head term of a family. Very good. An abstract head term. So, the phoneme is abstract. Well, the members of the phoneme, what are they called? Allophones. They're called allophones. And they are related phonetically. They're related phonetically. So, allophones. So, normally we write down phonetic similarity. They also stand in complementary distribution. Okay. Complimentary distribution. So, these are concepts which should now be clear. That reminds me of an example from politics. Obama and Putin. Two politicians. They are similar. They are two presidents. But they're in complementary distribution. One is in the United States and the other one is in Russia, but never vice versa. So, this family approach is referred to as the physical view. It goes back to Daniel Jones. It was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, but it's still the most popular one. And what's about the psychological view? Yeah, the psychological view. I wanted to ask the question now you asked me. Okay, that's fine. The psychological view. Well, it's illustrated here by this cloud. And this cloud simply says the phoneme is even more abstract. We have it in our minds and we aim at it during the process of speaking. Very speculative, isn't it? So, let's now add the functional view. It simply says that phonemes can distinguish the meaning of words, but alophons can't. Okay, very good. So, phonemes may change the meaning, change of meaning. Let's write that down. Meaning and alophons, no change of meaning. And you see the blue one is associated with Troubet's koi. The green approach is associated with the psychological view of Decortenet and the red one is Daniel Jones. So, with one picture, one image, you can define the phoneme and repeat it, repeat all these views altogether. Now, the functional view implies a very simple discovery procedure. Either an element changes the meaning or not. If yes, we have a phoneme. If no, we have alophones. Let's illustrate this with a very simple example. So, I'm writing down the word Paul here. And Paul can be phonetically represented like this. Now, all we have to do, Thérèse, is we have to think about words that have the same structure in general, but where one element is different and then we find out is the meaning different or not. So, can you write down some words perhaps? The first thing, one that I think of as maul. Maul, very good. So, let me write down, at the same time, the word in terms of phonetic symbols. Yes, maul. Then pale. Yeah, pale. Perhaps you write the next one in the middle. Pale. Oh, it's aspirated as well. Okay. And pork. Pork, okay. Very good. So, let me write down pork over here. So, pork. Now, I wrote the words down phonetically, but let's now underline the segments that differ. So, here we have the maul, which is clearly a phoneme. Paul and maul are different. Now, here we have a, Paul and pale are different. And here we have the ker, Paul and pork are different. So, we've identified four phonemes. The per, the me, the diphthong a, and the vela plosive ker. So, that's quite simple. That's a sort of discovery procedure. And we could add many, many more words that have a similar structure. So, let's now turn our attention to the central principles of transcription. A good way of approaching the topic is to produce a nonsense word in front of your students, which contains many phonetic details. Let the students write down the word phonetically and orthographically. So, Theresa, we did that in class. We have now got to simulate that. So, I'm pronouncing a word and you have to write it down. Okay? So, here is the word. Teep crawl. And again, teep crawl. Okay. Now, once your students are ready, ask your students to write down the orthographic representation of what they heard on the board. So, I said teep crawl. And now, Theresa will write down several representations, orthographic representation of what she heard. Teep crawl. So, the first one uses two E's and a word which we know from crawl. Then we have, let's see what she does. Ah, yeah. Teep with EA. Teep crawl. A. Ah, two L's. Yes, like in call. Certainly. Yes, you're right. And then, well, she uses, ah, teep, T-E-P-E. And the cur is possible. Very good. Oh, yes. Crawl. Teep crawl. Very good. So, we have three different presentations of the same word. So, now at this point, your students could already have been convinced that they need some sort of transcription, but at least they should have recognized that there's some sort of discrepancy between sound and spelling and present day English. If they're not convinced, let's use the language argument. The argument that discusses the phonetic relevance of writing systems in the languages of the world. So, Theresa, how many languages are there on our planet? About 7,000. Okay. And how many of these, as far as we know, have a writing system? Probably 15%. 15%. Okay. And do all these writing systems reflect the pronunciation of the respective language? No, not all. Some are just reflecting the meaning, not the pronunciation. And I think you all have seen such systems. For example, Chinese. In Chinese, we have a logographic writing system. This here is a meaning representation of the very big book, and this is what it sounds like. A very big book. And in a dialect? A totally different pronunciation, same spelling. So, the logographic writing system is not useful for the phonetic representation of a language. So, we are left with other writing systems, with the so-called phonographic writing systems. Well, here are some examples. Maybe you've seen them before. In Hindi, like we've spoken in India, we have a Devanagiri system. Russian Cyrillic is another system. The Georgian Kedruli system. All these are alphabetic writing systems, where one character stands for a particular sound. Teresa, do you know any other alphabet? For example, the alphabet we use? Yes, the Roman alphabet. The Roman alphabet. Okay. And one could now argue that the Roman alphabet maybe is a useful notation for the phonetic representation of a language. Do you know a language that could be an example of this? Yes, there is one language, Italian. Italian. Very good. So, let's illustrate this right now. Italian. Here you see an example from the VLC Language Index. Italian is spoken in Brescia. Now, let's try and read Italian on the basis of the orthographic representation. Which sentence or phrase do you want to read? I would like to read this one. Okay. La donna vede l'uomo. La donna vede l'uomo. Oh, almost. Sounds Italian. They would have understood you. And if I read another one, for example, La donna dormi. La donna dormi. Also, the vowel is a little bit strange, but they would have understood me. So, we can conclude that the Italian language can be represented relatively well on the basis of the orthographical system. But what about English? Now, if we move on to English, we can define a problem. Okay. So, here we have the character combination O-U-G-H. What I want you to do now and what the students have to do in class is give me words that contain this character combination and are pronounced as far as the vowel concerned in a different way. So, what can we do here? Tough. Tough is an example. Yes. So, could write down the word. Tough. And this would be the phonetic representation of O-U-G-H. Though. Though. Very good. Yes. Though. And here we have a diphthong. Through. Through. Yes. Okay. They all look almost identical, these words. And they're pronounced so differently. And the last one is plough. Plough. Yes. Very good. The agricultural tool plough. And there we are. Is that it or are there more? No, there are even more. There are more. So, we have listed them in advance. Here they are. We have words like cough, hiccup, throat and thorough. So, you see eight different representations all use the same character combinations but are pronounced differently. And the story is even more complicated if we go on with some of these words and now try to translate the vowel that is involved in each particular case. Here, the vowels into an alternative orthographical representation. So, do you know a word that uses the aff and is spelled differently? Tough. Tough. Very good. So, we have tough. And what about o? Is foe. Foe, yes. Very unusual but okay. Show. Show is possible, yes. No, so, um, yeah, that's it. Well, no isn't it? No go. Okay. And then through. Shoe. Shoe, yes. Good. Two. And the other two as well. Okay, great. Well, let's leave it with that. And finally, ow. It's now. Now. Or mouse. Mouse. And perhaps a few more. So, this should now be convincing enough to tell your students that we definitely need some sort of transcription that the Roman alphabet alone is not sufficient for a phonetic description of the English sound system. So, we need a special transcription system. But which one? Let us illustrate the variance of transcription using the example that I produced earlier on. Now, Teresa, honestly, you wrote down this word. Did you get this solution? Did you get it perfectly right? No, I didn't have the vowel like that. Okay. So, this vowel. All right. But if you get most, since you got most of these segments right, well done, I can only say. Here you see a narrow phonetic transcription with many details. For example, we have diacritics that represent the phonetic details of this particular word. What sort of diacritics do we have? First, there's an aspiration. Aspiration here, for example, yes. Incomplete closure. Very good. The devoicing. Devoicing down here. And, realisation. Realisation. Okay. So, we have forked diacritics. We could even say, okay, the length mark is the fifth one. But you see all the phonetic details are contained in this sort of representation. For phoneticians who want to explore an unknown language, this is certainly the right tool. But as a language teacher, we do not want to burden our students with so many details. So, let us change our solution from a narrow phonetic to a broad phonemic transcription. And here it is, the broad phonemic transcriptions. So, what is different? The brackets are gone. Yeah. First of all, we have new brackets here. The phonemic brackets, the so-called slashes. And then? All the diacritics are gone, too. Okay. The diacritics are no longer there. And anything else? The alveolar approximate is now represented as a normal r. Okay. So now, in accordance with the principles of the International Phonetic Association, we are using a standard orthographical r. So, we have as few as possible exotic symbols. We have Roman symbols by and large. And we have no diacritics anymore. Perhaps we should make it even simpler. So, this is what some people suggest. This would be a simple phonemic transcription where we now have further changes. So, how can we describe these changes? Well, we only have Roman symbols left. But this sort of system... So, it's just a sort of respelling? It's a sort of respelling. You're absolutely right. Just like we could respell our names so that native speakers of English would pronounce them correctly. So, I have a name which has to be respelled. Otherwise, people have some nasty ideas about my first name. So, this is how I would respell my name. What about yours? So, Jürgen comes out like this. And Theresa, which is the... Yes, she's using Z. Theresa, like the razor. Yes, Theresa. And so, you see now we have used some sort of respelling just like in a simplified phonemic transcription. Yep, the phonetic details are no longer represented. So, the choice is clear. For teaching purposes, we need a system that is not too exotic but represents a sufficient amount of facts. A broad phonemic transcription. So, this is the one we are going to use henceforth. Well, let's summarize. In this in-class meeting, we first deepened the students' knowledge about the phoneme, the approaches towards it, and the central discovery procedures. Then, we discussed the necessity of using a specific notation to represent the pronunciation of a language. We saw that the English orthography is not capable of doing this. Looking at the variants of phonetic notations, we found that a broad phonemic transcription is the most suitable candidate to do the job. It is simple enough. It contains a sufficient amount of phonetic details. And it adheres to most principles suggested by the International Phonetic Association. Theresa, when you started your BA program, you probably could not imagine what a phonetic transcription is. And now you have learned that a broad phonemic transcription should be used for present-day English. Could we convince you somehow? Yes, now I know that just having the Roman alphabet is not good enough for teaching the pronunciation of English. Okay, very good. And I hope you are convinced too. So that's it for now. See you again in another VLC in class suggestion. Thank you, Theresa. Thank you all for your patience. Bye-bye. Bye.