Pronunciation learning tools

[Iversen]

I think minimal pairs are excellent for the analysis of a language into phonemes (the 'letters' of speech), but not for studying its actual pronunciation. There you have to study phones.

As usual you need to be attentive to things to pick them up, and some learners analyze what they hear, others rely on osmosis. I 'm definitely in the first camp, and one of the techniques I have used is to take a short passage (one short sentence is enough) and then write down exactly what I hear using some homemade notation system. I would like to quote one example of this from my language learning guide, version 3 (not published yet):

Quote: I took a sentence from the homepage of Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and then I let four different voices from the Acapela Box (http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-sp ... -demo.html) read it aloud. The result, which I published on HTLAL in 2012, clearly shows how much variation there is between different speakers - a lesson which language learners and teachers definitely should take seriously:

U kunt tegenwoordig een combi-kaart voor Burgers' Zoo en het Nederlands Openluchtmuseum kopen

/e könt teχəvo·Rdeχ e·n kɔmbikαRRt fo·R BöRhɔrs so· æn ət ne·dɔlansə-öpənleχtmyseåm kåubə /
/y könt teχəvo·RRdeχ e·n kɔmbikαRRt fo·R BöRgɔs so· æn-ət ne·dɔla·Rns opɔlöχtmyseöm ko·pə /
/y könt teχəvo·Rdeχ en kɔmbikαRt fo·R BøRgɔs so· æn (h)ət ne·dɔlansə opɔ(R)löRχtmyzæöm kåbə/
/y könt teχəvɔ·Rdeχ e·n kɔmbikαRRt fo·R BøRχɔRs so· æn ət ne·dɔla(R)ns opɔ(R)löRχtmyzæjöm kåupə/

It takes surprisingly long time to catch the subtleties in even a few sentences, but after you have done it you are better equipped to hear what really is going on in genuine speech. And then you can translate the rough indications in dictionaries etc. to the actual sounds which you have heard with your own ears. And yes, I ought to use some internationally recognized standard system for the transcription task, but I feel more at home with my own homebrewed systems - which to boot differ from language to language.

The same trick can of course be used on intonation, and as a tribute to Jeff-Lindquist I would like to show the result of a Scandinavian experiment:

yt.jpg

[NIKOLIĆ]

IPA, a keen ear and a knowledgeable native speaker to give you feedback and advice you won't otherwise find in your run-of-the-mill textbook.