These are the overheads from class 1 of a semester-long, once/week Phonetics course for students in Communication Disorders.

1. Welcome to Phonetics
CD 233
Lisa Lavoie

2. In just a few short months…
You’ll have trained ears
You’ll know how to transcribe English…
Standard American and other varieties
Foreign accents, kids’ disordered
You’ll understand how speech is
articulated

3. Introduce yourselves
Tell us how you say your name
I’ll transcribe it on the board
Also tell us:
Where you grew up
Other languages you speak or studied
What kind of an accent you think you have

4. Knowledge and skills today
Take home the sheet and fill it out
Bring it back next Wednesday
We’ll look at it again at the end of the
course to see how much you have
learned

5. Phoneticians study…
The sounds of speech (and their
variation)
Auditory: how sounds are perceived
Articulatory: how sounds are made
Acoustic: the physics of speech sounds
Signed languages also have phonetics

6. What you can do with phonetics
Understand speech errors
Make computers speak
Help someone master a new sound
Figure out where someone is from
Determine if a child is developing
normally

7. Mouth some speech silently
Speaking is something that most of us
do effortlessly
In phonetics, we break that down into
the components
What can you feel moving to produce
speech?

8. X-ray videos or cineradiographs
Observe closely
One part of the vocal tract at a time
Lips, tongue, velum, throat/pharynx
“On top of his deck”
 http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1.1/chapter1.1.

9. Structure of the course
Syllabus, requirements, participation!
Work hard early to cover the basics
3 take home exams (no final exam)
Various homework and quizzes
A small project
Final project (group or individual)

10. Spelling? Trustworthy?
We all know how to spell; couldn’t we
just use that?
Examples why or why not…

11. Write these pronunciations
Tomato, Bach, dog, fire, exit, garage
Did we all do the same things?

12. Try these sentences
The wind is strong enough to wind the
windmill.
Please polish the Polish silver.
It took a minute to find the minute latch.
Excuse me while I think of an excuse.
Separate the cards into separate piles.

13. Correspondences in spelling
Did he believe that Caesar could see the
people seize the seas?
See, senile, sea, seize, scenic, siege, ceiling,
cedar, cease, juicy, sexy, glossy
Show, issue, mansion, national, suspicion,
ocean, conscious, chaperone, fuschia
Breeze, cheese, ease, sleaze, frieze
Many spellings for one pronunciation

14. More spelling correspondences
Tough, cough, through, though,
hiccough, bough, thoroughfare
Love, move, rove (eye rhymes)
One spelling for many pronunciations
No one-to-one correspondence between
sound and spelling

15. Representing sounds of speech
To do this accurately, must have a standard
Using a standard with one-to-one sound to
spelling correspondence
IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet
 Global standard, used in:
 Communication disorders, theater,
 Language teaching, dictionaries, directories,
 Theoretical and computational linguistics

16. How many sounds?
First step in transcribing is breaking down into
individual sounds (ignoring the spelling!)…
 Cat
 Snack
 Moon
 Planet
 Boy
 Girl

17. How many sounds? Part 2
Remember to ignore the spelling and trust
your own pronunciation
 Taxi
 Bathing
 Chocolate
 Gnome
 Slippery
 Prints
 Laundry

18. How many sounds? Part 3
 Knee
 Catalogue
 Abode
 Almond
 Psychology
 Enough
 Phlegm
 Xerox

19. Consonants and vowels of English
How many different consonants do you
guess English has?
How about vowels?
And diphthongs?

20. Consonants and vowels of English
How many different consonants do you
guess English has?
24
How about vowels?
14
And diphthongs?
3, 4, or 6 depending on how you count

21. Consonants
Pretty easy because our usual
alphabetic symbols represent them
pretty well
16 of the 24 are exactly what you’d
expect
Name some consonants
And here are the rest…
Practice writing the symbols

22. Easier symbols for consonants
Important: use lower case
Upper case may represent totally
different sound - example of B
p b t d k g m n f v s z h l r w

23. More challenging consonants
Engma “ng”: ŋ
Theta for “th” “thin”: θ
Eth for other “th” “the”: ð
Esh – “sh” elongated s: ʃ
Ezh – z with tail: ʒ
“ch” – 2 symbols: tʃ
“j” – 2 symbols: dʒ
“y” j

24. Using the consonant symbols
Examples
The trickier symbols in different positions
The concept of a minimal pair or set

25. Vowels
Trickier! Sorry.
English varies a lot in vowels
Fewer letters of alphabet to begin with
So more symbols to master
Fill in frame of “h_d” with different
vowels to make as many words as
possible

26. Vowel Symbols – basic 5 vowels
Romance language vowels
i u
e o
a

27. English has more vowels!
Refer to handout of symbols for
transcription
Do examples on board together

28. Diphthongs
3 true diphthongs
aɪ pie
aʊ pow
ɔɪ poi
Sometimes called diphthongs
eɪ pay
oʊ po (the Teletubbie)
ju pew

29. Using the vowel symbols
Examples in different positions
Slight differences
Unstressed syllables
Vowels before /r/ are extremely tricky
and more info and tips will come

30. Homework
Begin studying the symbols!
Submit HW 1 by midnight Saturday
Submit HW 2 before class on
Wednesday
Get in touch with me if you’re having
issues – don’t suffer in silence!