INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET

Spoken language has always preceded written language. In the development of any written alphabet, an attempt is made to symbolize in writing every sound that is spoken within the given environment. Written English developed from Latin symbols used by Christian missionaries in the sixth century. At that time, the written word was probably more closely related to the sound of the language than it is now. In a complex social order usage creates changes in the written symbols so that no modern language possesses a symbol for every sound. (Spanish is closest to such an ideal language, for the spelling in this language serves as a reliable guide to pronunciation.)

Because linguistic analysts needed an alphabet which would provide a symbol for every sound, the International Phonetic Alphabet was devised by the International Phonetic Association in 1886.² This alphabet was based upon the Broad Romic Alphabet of Henry Sweet, a British phonetician. The IPA, modified only slightly since that time, is employed by more people than any comparable alphabet because it supplies a consistency between the written symbol and the sound. One symbol must represent one sound, one sound must represent one symbol.

From one point of view phonetics is indispensable: Only through phonetics can one give even a rough classification and description of the sounds of any language. From another point of view, phonetic analysis is a hopeless task, for if one listens closely enough to any word that is uttered, the number of different features that one can find is endless.

In analyzing the speech sounds used in singing, one must constantly attempt to differentiate between those phonetic features of a language that are distinctive as cues of meaning and those that are nondistinctive. For this reason diacritical marks, placed upon or around each of the IPA symbols, are used to further interpret the speech characteristic of each vowel. They reveal the positions of the articulators at the time of utterance. A listing of the IPA is shown on pages 175-77. The analyses in this book will be based upon broad transcription techniques which employ the diacritical marks listed on page 174. These marks are only used when a refined analysis of the uttered sound is needed for dialectal classification.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is used throughout the world today in all serious works of pronunciation and in pronouncing dictionaries of all languages.³

The author has no intention of prescribing rules for correct pronunciation. However, in transcribing illustrative materials, one must decide which pronunciation to indicate. Therefore, all phonetic transcriptions in this work will be based upon the general American dialect found in A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English by John S. Kenyon and Thomas A. Knott.

The student should master the International Phonetic Alphabet by reading simple word forms and drills with nonsense syllables, words, and sentences. He should transcribe each exercise in the IPA symbols and transcribe peculiar pronunciation for duplication of the precise sound. Students should be encouraged to study in groups so that each student can be criticized by the others; self-criticism, a most valuable asset, can be developed through such a process.

The English language has forty-seven letters in the IPA but only twenty-six letters in the written alphabet. This difference occurs because each of the vowels in the English language is pronounced several different ways, necessitating the subdivision of vowel sounds.

The IPA is much better suited to the purpose of singing than a system of diacritical marks employed in some dictionaries, for in a diacritical system a greater number of symbols are used, and each sound is represented by a different symbol.

The following symbols of the IPA do not appear in English spelling:

[æ] as in sat, formed by combining the lower case letter a and e

[ɝ] General American r, a reversed Greek letter epsilon with a curl on the top

[ə] as in above, an inverted letter e

[ʌ] as in up, an inverted v

[ɔ] as in all, a reversed letter c

[ɵ] as in bath, the Greek letter theta

[ð] as in bathe, an old English form of the

[ʃ] sh as in shock

[ʒ] as in vision, elongated forms of s and z

[ŋ] a nasal, as in hung, a letter n with a tail.⁴

IPA symbols should be printed and bracketed rather than written so that they will be easily recognized and not confused with phonetic transcriptions. In all phonetic transcriptions, the phonetic symbols must represent all of the sounds heard when the word is pronounced. Do not include silent letters that appear in such words as hour [aur], know [no], bone [bon], and eight [et]. Doubled consonants are replaced with single consonants, as in matter [mætɚ]. Homonyms, two words spelled differently but pronounced the same—such as know and no, and son and sun— are transcribed the same: [no] and [sun]. If two words are spelled the same but are pronounced differently—such as bow (the verb) and bow (the noun)—the difference in sound must be represented in the transcription: [bau] and [bo].

Diacritical Marks Used in Broad Transcriptions

‘ sign of aspiration	below and to the left of a
’ sign of inspiration	syllable, secondary stress
sign of raising the tongue	glottal stopx
sign of lowering the tongue	trill
sign of fronting the tongue	sign of dentality
sign of retracting the tongue	~ sign of nasalization
beneath a consonant makes it a	sign of lengthening
syllable	later as final in buckle [bʌkl̩]
above and to the left of a	nasal in final in button [butn̩]
syllable, primary stress	t nasal in final in rotten [ratn]

TABLE I

Phonetic Symbols with Equivalent Sounds
of English, French, German, and Italian

EXERCISES AND DRILLS

1. Transcribe each of the following words that have the same central phoneme in the English language. Sing each word aloud and try to use exactly the same vowel sound for each word. Hold articulators in position for four beats—notice position of articulators in pronunciation of each word.

[ɑ] father, psalm, alms, guardian, hearth, sergeant

[a] lamb, ask, man, rapture, glad, hand

[ᴜ] put, cushion, boudoir, bosom, worsted, soot

[i] beat, reef, believe, quay, machine, leave

[ô] store, lord, memory, chore, snore, board

[ɪ] rich, been, him, pity, crypt, since

[e] dado, daisy, chaos, vacation, Danish, prayer

[u] lose, blew, prove, whom, through, plume

[o] mow, sew, boat, yeoman, though

[ʌ] tub, come, brusque, blood, above

[ǝ] above, unction, constable, firmament, lovable.

2. Memorize each of the following symbols and transcribe each of the following words using symbols that do not appear in the English language. Sing each word aloud and try to use exactly the same vowel sound for each word.

Vowels

[ɛ] said, lead, quest, leather, friend, leopard

[æ] back, sat, magic, shadow, dazzle, snatches

[ɔ] stalk, call, awe, dawn, fought, ultra, double

[ɜ] bird, church, earth, furry, burn, pert

Consonants

[ð] tithe, wither, southern, breathe, worthy, thither

[ɵ] path, theme, lengthen, method, mouth, thither

[ʒ] beige, Hoosier, vision, azure, garage, measure

[ʃ] anxious, sure, ocean, precious, tension, auction

[tʃ] church, righteous, butcher, champion, question

[dʒ] cage, judge, jam, soldier, engine, legion

[ɚ] never, sister, winter, shepherd, pleasure

[ŋ] hung, wringer, inkling, strangle, drinker

[j] champion, union, view, stupid, mayor

[ju] human, pneumonia, nuisance, knew, stupid

[ʍ] where, erstwhile, somewhat, who, whirl

Other Consonantal Sounds

[r] forlorn, for, warm, garden, morning

[m] hymn, diaphragm, mummer, camphor, symbol

[w] wear, twinkle, doing, quick, weather

[n] income, knife, ninny, nine, cotton

[v] halve, vivid, of, valve, have, very

[s] absurd, mass, fence, scent, discern, essence

[b] cab, table, raspberry, cabin, thimble

[k] chromium, concede, success, quick, acquire

[p] hiccough, pumpkin, happy, capture, empty

[g] ghost, rugby, guilty, trigger, brogue

[d] dawdle, bidder, handful, dreadful, traded

[t] little, pitfall, satisfy, postman, nut

[h] behind, anyhow, behead, pothole, human

[f] Stephen, phonate, prophet, soften, laugh

3. As a beginning drill, transcribe the following Biblical verses. Only the letters of the phonetic alphabet listed above have been used. Familiarity with the text, simplifies the task of matching the sound. However, this drill should be supplemented with the simple nonsense words in which the sounds are not familiar.

4. Practice reading these nonsense syllables aloud. Exaggerate lip-rounding, lip-spreading, voicing, and unvoicing of consonants.

5. Practice reading these nonsense sentences aloud. Exaggerate lip-rounding, lip-spreading, voicing and unvoicing of consonants. Strive for phonemic accuracy.

6. Transcribe into phonetic symbols.

7. Transcribe into phonetic symbols.

SAMPLE PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

TO SIT IN SOLEMN SILENCE

8. Transcribe into English.

9. Transcribe this example^* of General American dialect into English.

10. Transcribe this example of Southern dialect into English.

11. Transcribe this example of British Stage dialect into English.

12. Transcribe the following examples of Northern, Southern, and Eastern dialects.

Type I—Northern^*

Type II—Southern*

Type III—Eastern^*

THE SOUNDS OF GERMAN

As a sound system, languages are either symmetrical or asymmetrical. Within the English language, the frontal vowels are formed by varying degrees of lip-spreading; the back vowels are formed by varying degrees of lip-rounding; the central vowels, being neutral, are neither spread nor rounded. Such a system is said to be symmetrical. Conversely, the vowel system that contains lip-rounded front vowels or lip-spread back vowels is said to be asymmetrical, depending upon their conformance to this system.⁵

The German language is asymmetrical in that the vowels that do not appear in the English Language are formed with rounded lips instead of spread lips. They are called rounded frontal vowels. (For kinesiologic analysis of these vowels, see p. 357-65 and Records 1-4 Bands 22 and 24.) The non-English sounds in German are the following:

Vowels

Consonants

THE SOUNDS OF FRENCH

The French language is asymmetrical. Three of the frontal vowels are formed by both lip-rounding and lip-spreading. Nasalizing of the frontal, central, and back vowels also determines asymmetry. (For kinesiologic analysis, see p. 357-73 and Records 1-4, Bands 25 and 28; French placement of [a] and [a], Record 1, Band 29.) The non-English sounds in French are as follows:⁷

Vowels

Consonants

[ŋ] as in champagne [ʃɑ̃paŋ] tongue is placed behind lower front teeth; similar to English word onion

[u] as in nuage [nya:ʒ] a tense w made with tongue in position for [y]; lips rounded for [y]

[ɾ] as in sur [sy:ɾ] the flipped r made with tongue tip

[r] as in reste [rɛst] the uvular trill

[y] as in lui [ly] start with tight lips in position of glide to [i]

___________________

^* Charles W. Woolbert and Servina E. Nelson, The Art of Interpretive Speech (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1945).

^** From Selected Poems of T. A. Daly, copyright, 1936, by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., renewed, 1964, by Thomas A. Daly, Jr., and reprinted by permission of the publishers.

^* Claude Merton Wise, Applied Phonetics, © 1957. Reprinted by permission of Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

^* By permission, from a transcription illustrating the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, copyright by G. & C. Merriam Co., publishers of the Merriam-Webster Dictionaries.

^* By permission, from a transcription illustrating the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, copyright by G. & C. Merriam Co., publishers of the Merriam-Webster Dictionaries.