 In this video we'll be looking at the International Phonemic Alphabet and how it's used in the classroom. There are other phonemic alphabets, but this is the most popular and the system which is most widely used. You may have seen some of these symbols before as any good dictionary will supplement standard English spellings with the phonemic spellings to aid in pronunciation practice. Here we have a situation where we have what are called phonemes and each phoneme represents a sound within the English language. How is this helpful? Well, what it does is help students understand how to say words rather than simply relying on the often archaic English spellings. To illustrate this point, let's for a moment put ourselves in the shoes of our students when trying to understand how to say the following words. Here we have a set of five words which I'll share one sound, the O sound, as in go, show, do, note, and boat. There are five different spelling patterns to tell our students so they can identify when to make the O sound. We can have a simple letter O, O-W, O-U-G-H, O with the magic E which turns our vowel into what we knew as long sounds, and the O-A as in boat. Now for a non-native learner perhaps they can handle something like this. They remember that these spelling combinations help to produce the O sound and they can go about their business looking at the words and memorizing this knowing that these spelling patterns will produce the sound O. Now that's okay until we get to a situation where we can also have words like two, cow, and also rough. So the student has gone from knowing that these letters put together in these patterns will produce an O sound and now they're confused by the fact that the same pattern can produce a different vowel sound here, it can produce a different vowel sound here, and a different vowel sound here. Put this all together and we created a situation which can become very confusing to our non-native learner. However, our international phonemic alphabet takes care of this problem by taking various spelling patterns and simplifying it into this symbol here. A better way to go about imparting how to make sounds or what sounds are utilized in a word is this international phonemic alphabet. Now we have as mentioned one symbol being used in all the words which share that same sound. Now once we get a little bit more familiar with our phonemic alphabet, we can also show how different our different sounds can be as in this symbol for O, this symbol for O, and this symbol for O. There are two issues that need to be stressed when working with the international phonemic alphabet. First is the fact that we are no longer concerned with how a word is traditionally spelled. Additionally, we need to stress that we are only concerned with the sounds needed to correctly produce a word. So rather than numerous spellings which can often be pronounced in different ways, we have one symbol representing one sound. Once we can isolate a sound, rather than juggling various spellings, we can work with our students on how to say that sound. Doing that successfully is related to manner and place of articulation which will be covered shortly. To get a better understanding of the phonemic alphabet, let's take a look at our chart. In the bottom half of our chart, we have our consonant sounds. Each symbol represents one sound, whereas in the Roman alphabet, one consonant letter could produce a few different sounds such as in the case with a C. It can be a hard C as in cake, or it can be a soft C as in nice. With the phonemic alphabet, we alleviate that confusion again with one phoneme representing one sound. We've gotten rid of the C and replaced it simply with a C sound as in cake, or a S sound as in nice. Most of the consonant sounds are represented by letters which coincide with the Roman alphabet. However, we do have eight symbols which can confuse students when they're just getting this introduced to them. First, we have this symbol which represents a ch sound typically spelled with a C-H. Next to that, we have this symbol which represents the j sound. Moving further down, we have our th sounds. One sound would be th as in think, another sound would be th as in that. Moving over, we have this symbol which represents the sh sound, and this symbol which represents the z sound as in measure. Here we have the ng symbol which represents the ng sound as in song. And lastly, we have this symbol which looks like it would represent the j sound, but it doesn't. It represents the y sound as in y. The next thing we should look at is how our consonants are arranged. For the top two rows, we have p and f at the left side of our chart, and g and g at the right side of our chart. They're arranged this way because if we analyze the way we speak, we're using the front of our mouth to use these sounds as in p and f. I'm using my lips and my teeth to produce those sounds, and as we move to the right on the chart, slowly but surely we're making those sounds towards the back of our mouth. We can use the examples of g. The sound g is produced further back in our mouth than p. The next thing we'll notice about our chart is that some of our symbols are shaded. Notice that none of the symbols in the vowel sections are shaded, but only a few are in the consonant section. The shaded symbols represent what are called unvoiced phonemes. An unvoiced phoneme doesn't require any vibration in our vocal chords in order to be made, whereas with most sounds, especially all of our vowel sounds, we have a voiced phoneme in which our vocal chords are vibrating in order to produce that sound. Let's look at a few phonemes which are quite similar in the other aspects of its production, but the only difference is in whether or not it's voiced or unvoiced. Take for instance the f and v sounds. They're both made in the same way as our breath is concerned, and they're made in the same way as a placement of our vocal organs are concerned. The only difference comes in the fact that our f sound is unvoiced, again that requires no vibration in our vocal chords to be made. We can articulate this onto our students by asking them to simply place two fingers over their throat and feel the difference between f and v. You can try that at home now with the s and z sounds. Put your fingers over your throat and pronounce the s sound and then the z sound. You can quite literally feel the difference. The top half of our chart is concerned with the vowel sounds and it's split into two parts. On the left hand side we have our 12 pure vowels. There's one individual unit of sound and which corresponds to a vowel sound, such as a as in pat, i as in pit, or a as in pot. Within the pure vowels we have what are called long vowel sounds. They tend to be said for a bit longer than the rest of the pure vowels, and we can tell our long vowels by the presence of a colon to the right of each phoneme. Secondly, we have what are called the diphthongs. The diphthongs combine two vowel sounds in such a way that it's impossible to split them and still pronounce the word correctly. Our diphthongs also require a movement in the mouth in order for that vowel sound to be made. To illustrate the point, let's take a look at the vowel sound oi. Oi consists of two different but distinct sounds, but here they cannot be divided and still pronounce the word boy correctly. We can even see the difference when we really analyze how we're making that sound. That sound again is oi, oi. It requires a movement in the mouth in order to be made, as well as all diphthongs requiring that movement in the mouth because there are actually two different sounds coming together. Now let's take a look at how we go from traditional spellings into the phonemic spellings. The first step in this process is identifying each unit of sound or each phoneme within a word. Let's look at bet, bit, but, and bought. The only difference in each one of these words is in the vowel sound. We have but, ah, and bought, but, ah. Each word simply uses three sounds. Now we have photo, ph, o, tch, o. That's four phonemes. Now we have taxi, ah, e. That's five phonemes. We have unite with a hidden phoneme in there being the y sound before anything else. y, o, n, i, tch. Those are five phonemes as well. And now we have a longer word, chemistry. Let's give that a shot. e, n, i, s, e. That's eight phonemes used in the word chemistry. Now, once we've isolated each sound, we want to assign a phoneme for each one of those sounds. Let's do that now. As mentioned before, our four words here all are similar in using the b and t sounds at the end. So we know that those phonemes will be used in spelling each one of those words phonetically. Now what we're left to do is assign a phoneme for our vowel sounds. So if we analyze the word, it's e, as in bet. We look at our chart, we see the phoneme which corresponds to that e sound, and that happens to be the standard e that we all recognize. Here, bet phonetically looks very similar to bet in the roman script. Now let's take a look at e, bit. Now we look at our chart and we see that this symbol represents the e sound and that resembles a capital i, not a lowercase i but a capital i, and so we've arrived at bit. Now with but, we have to find the uh sound and that corresponds to this symbol here as in cut, but we simply put it into but and now we've got but. Finally, we have bought and we have to find the phoneme for the uh sound and we look here in our pure vowels and we see that this symbol here is used in pot and that's a very similar sound, in fact the same sound as in bought. So we know that we use this phoneme here to arrive at bought. Now we can take a look at the word photo. Here we have and we need to find a phoneme for the oh, fo, oh. We can look on our chart and locate this symbol for the oh sound and again we have toe, fo, toe, the only difference being the t for the f and we've arrived at photo for phonemes there. Now we have taxi, we have as in the first sound then we have ah and we have to locate the vowel and now we have the ah symbol. The x here actually has two phonemes the k and s so we look at the k and s phonemes and the last phoneme there e as in the long i sound taxi. Now we have unite as mentioned previously there's a slight ye sound at the beginning so we begin it with our ye phoneme and then we continue on you as in o, you, n, phoneme and then it we have our vowel i, i as in by and our final sound unite. When it comes to manner of articulation we have six different ways in which our breath is produced in order to make our sounds. We have our plosives our africates, fricatives, the nasal sounds, our lateral sound and the approximants. Let's take a look at each individually and see how they differ from one another. First we have our plosive sounds. As the word might indicate we have basically a little explosion of sound with our breath. The plosive sounds are made through a three-step process. First there's a closure somewhere in the vocal tract. Second there's a buildup of air and finally there's a sudden release of that air like a little explosion. If we look at some of the sounds that are made this way we might better understand why they are called plosives. Examples are the p and g sounds. Again we have a closure in the vocal tract, a buildup of air, and a sudden release and g. Next we have our africates. This manner of articulation is very very close to the plosives. However there's one very important difference and that's in the last step. Again with the africates we have a closure somewhere in the vocal tract. We have a buildup of air. However with this manner of articulation we have a gradual release of air rather than the sudden release of air with the plosives. There are two examples of these sounds and they are ch and j. Again there's a closure, a buildup of air, but yet this time it's a sudden release. Let's take a look at that one more time. We have ch and j. Now let's take a look at our fricatives. As the name indicates especially the beginning there we have a friction going on in the vocal tract and that's basically what we're dealing with mostly. There are a number of fricative sounds and they're made by placing two vocal organs together and making them vibrate to a point which is audible. We have nine of these sounds and they move from the front to the back of the vocal tract. Let's take a look here. In the front of the mouth we have two sounds which involve our lips. Those two sounds are The only difference between those two sounds is that one is voiced and the other is not. Regardless we do involve our lips and they are the furthest front of the vocal tract with our fricatives. Again those sounds are and moving just a bit further back we're involving our tongue and our teeth. Those are the th sounds and we're putting our tongue in between our teeth and those two bits of the vocal tract are vibrating together. They're the voiced and unvoiced th sounds and those are and you can even feel the friction as it goes on. Again those are sounds. Now moving a bit further back in the mouth we have our friction which comes from the middle of our mouth. Those sounds we have four of them are and those two sounds are made in the same manner and in the same place and here we have an instance where again one is voiced and the other is not. First the unvoiced and the voiced our second set of sounds within this part of our vocal tract are and again very similar sounds same place same manner of articulation the only difference is that one is voiced while the other is not. Let's look at the unvoiced and the voiced then we have our sound that is into the back and that is in the glottis. It's the H or the H sound. That aspiration becomes a lot more audible when we have what are called the glottal languages being German to a certain extent Dutch and certainly our Arabic languages. And now we have our nasal sounds. There are three nasal sounds and basically the pattern of air that's moving out of our vocal tract has to do with two big instances and that is a closure in the vocal tract except aside from the plosives and africans what we have is air escaping through our nasal cavity. These sounds include and we're moving from the front of the mouth to the back of the mouth. First with the M sound or the we're closing both lips and the air is escaping through the nasal passage. Next we have our N sound or our M sound. There the closure is inside the mouth but our tongue is closing up near our aviola ridge and the air is escaping through the nose. Again that's M. Finally we have our NG sound and the closure there is happening further back in the vocal tract and now we're producing a sound such as M. It's not a wonderful sound but nonetheless we do need to use it especially with our present participle and our gerunds. Continuing on with the manner of articulation we have our lateral sound. There's only one of them I like to think of it as our lonely lateral sound. The lateral sound is the L sound or L. It's called lateral because the tip of the tongue is placed on the aviola ridge and air escapes through the mouth laterally along both sides of the tongue. Again that's lateral sounds and L. If you try that at home you can get again an appreciation of where the air is going. It's moving laterally along the vocal tract and that's L. Finishing off our manner of articulation we have our approximants. There are three approximants and I'll get to those shortly. The reason they're called approximants is because basically our vocal organs are approximately in the middle of our mouth. The big factor here is that there isn't any audible friction. Air is moving freely but the vocal organs are not close enough together to create audible friction. These sounds include W. The place of articulation is in the front. However the manner of articulation we have our tongue approximately in the middle of our mouth not causing any vibration with any other vocal organs and in order to produce the sound W. Next we have our R sound or our R sound. Again there isn't any audible friction within our vocal tract here and it's a very difficult sound to produce. It's very close to the lateral sound but the key differentiation here is that our tongue is not touching our aviola ridge. It's approximately in the middle of our mouth. One more time that's R. Finally we have our Y sound and Y again is just approximately in the middle there. It's not causing any audible friction it's Y. Place of articulation deals with the placement of the vocal organs when producing a sound. Before we can cover the particulars of places of articulation we'll need to take a look at the various vocal organs and their locations. Moving from the front to the back we begin with our lips. We can use both lips in order to create a sound or we can use one of our lips with one of our rows of teeth usually the top in order to produce another sound. We also have other sounds which use both of the rows of teeth. Further back we have what's called the alveolar ridge. That's the bit of the mouth that may get burnt when we're eating a pizza that's a bit too hot and the cheese burns just behind our top two teeth that again is the hard bit just behind our top teeth called the alveolar ridge. Just behind that we have our hard palate and we use that to create some sounds and behind our hard palate is our soft palate or what some people refer to as our vellum. We use those to create a few sounds as well. Within that from the front to the back we do have our nasal cavity and then finally we have our vocal cords and we use those for a few sounds as well. Let's take a look at how the various parts come together to make these sounds. Sounds which utilize both the top and bottom lips are called bilabial sounds. They typically come together as we're making the sound as an b, p, and m, but can also be used closed as when saying the sound w. In either instance we're either closing our mouth or using both lips to create that w sound. Sounds which utilize the bottom lip and the top row of teeth are known as labial dental sounds. The two sounds that are used in this way are the f and v sounds. Again we're using our top row of teeth and our bottom lips to create our f and v sounds. Dental sounds involve placing the tongue between both the top and the bottom rows of teeth. There are only two sounds made in this way and those are both of the th sounds. One is voiced, one isn't voiced. The unvoiced sound is f as in think. The other is voiced and it's z as in that. Alveolar sounds get their name from the fact that the alveolar ridge is being used. Again that ridge is just behind the front top row of teeth. Here the tongue is on or very very near the alveolar ridge. It's typically the tip of the tongue or what's just behind the tip of the tongue called the blade of the tongue. Here we're talking about sounds such as t and d. If you say them at home you can tell the tip of your tongue is on that alveolar ridge. Again that's t and d as well as sounds such as s and z. Again the blade of the tongue is just near that alveolar ridge but it is very near nonetheless. The two other sounds that make it into this category is the l sound where the tip of the tongue is very clearly touching that alveolar ridge as well as r or the r sound where the tongue is just curled a bit but up towards that alveolar ridge. Palata alveolar sounds have the tongue moving ever so slightly back in the vocal track but not quite back to the soft palate. If you compare these sounds to those of the alveolar group you should be able to feel this difference with the tongue moving just a bit slightly back. The sounds in this group include the sh sound of sh. Closer related to that is the z sound as well as our ch and j sounds. Moving further back now we have our palatal sound. There's only one and that is the y sound. Here we have our tongue raised high up against the palate in order to make that sound and therefore it involves the palate so it's our palatal sound. Again that's the y sound or y. Further back now we have our velar sounds. They're called so because they involve the tongue being raised against the soft palate and we have a few of those sounds as in k and g as well as the m sound is made here. Again it involves the tongue up against that soft palate or the velar region of our mouth with the k and g as well as m sounds. Finally we have our glottal sound and that's made furthest back in the vocal tract in what's called the glottis. It's way back in the throat in fact not in the mouth and the only sound made there is the h sound or the h sound. You can almost tell when you're saying it that it's made way back in the throat your mouth is nice and open the air is flowing through there's no vibration anywhere in the vocal tract and the sound is being made way back there. Again that's the h sound. Whereas stress is typically concerned with one individual word intonation is generally concerned with the variation in volume and pitch throughout an entire sentence. Intonation carries the message of a sentence it's particularly important when questioning or agreeing disagreeing and confirming statements it's also very important when expressing emotions and feelings. The normal pattern for intonation is the rise fall. A few examples would be I haven't seen him for a week or a simple word as okay. With the falling intonation we're indicating that we're finished speaking. Again I haven't seen him for a week and okay. A few more examples would be I'll see you at six then or a question of information how do you spell rough. These are straightforward statements that indicate that we're finished speaking and that we don't necessarily need an immediate response. Our second pattern is rather easily recognizable because it's not used as often and that is the fall rise pattern. This indicates surprise and often disagreement but above all it indicates that the speaker wants a person to respond or confirm. We could sarcastically say you don't really mean that do you. There I've said you don't really mean that do you. I'm obviously indicating that I need a response there. You could also say are you ready yet. Again it needs a response it's perhaps a little agitated but it's our other fall rise pattern. Are you ready yet. You could also have a sarcastic question such as are you serious. We are definitely indicating a surprise and we also need a response but it's a rather sarcastic question rather than a straightforward question where we use the rise fall pattern. Finally we do have our flat intonation and our flat intonation basically sends a message that we really are uninterested or not very concerned. These are the flat intonations of a simple just hello. We could say it with our rise fall pattern hello or we could say hello either way they're all different but the flat pattern indicates I'm really not too interested. The fall rise pattern of hello sort of indicates that I need a response back and then again the standard hello is just our standard rise fall pattern. Connected speech is also an important element of phonology and it's involved in joining words together in an effect to make our speech more efficient. One some might say it's a product of being lazy but nonetheless it's what we all do and we want all of our non-native speakers to speak as naturally as possible so we have to be aware of these things. Here are a few of the more common examples. We have linking, dropping, changing and extra lettering. An example of each would be with linking we link our words together so that they almost in effect become one word instead of saying what do you want to do we typically will say what do you want to do then we can also have dropping rather than pronouncing each and every consonant we can sometimes especially in certain accents drop some of the letters so in this word it should be butter and this should be computer but here it becomes but and computer then we can change our sounds as well again i've used the same examples but what we're doing is we're changing the t sound to a d sound because our it's more efficient for our vocal organs to move in that pattern so rather than a butter it's butter and rather than a computer it's computer. Then finally we have our extra lettering this typically comes as we want to connect two vowel sounds with a bit of a consonant sound so instead of saying my eyes are green we sneak in just a hint of a y sound so it becomes my eyes or my eyes are green then we can also have instead of drawing it can become drawing just as washing can sometimes become washing