The Joy of Phonetics: Getting help with IPA

One area many students struggle with in linguistics is phonetics. Understanding IPA, the IPA charts, transcriptions, and the application of IPA to phonology can be quite frustrating for beginners. Luckily, there are several helpful websites that just might help those frustrated students. (Some of these are mentioned in a past post, but they are worth mentioning again.)

1. UCLA's Interactive IPA Chart (from Ladefoged's "A Course in Phonetics")

Screenshot of UCLA's IPA Interactive Chart

The IPA chart that can be seen in the screenshot is interactive in that it allows you to click on any area to zoom in; once you're zoomed in on an area, it allows you to click on an individual symbol, and a sound file will play so that you can hear the sound that particular symbol represents, which is incredibly helpful for those world sounds that may not be in your native language. The only downside is that the sound files take you to a different screen instead of playing while you're still looking at the chart.

2. York University's Interactive IPA Chart

Screenshot of York's IPA Chart

This IPA chart is similar to the UCLA chart above but was created by Eric Armstrong and has a few extra features that students may find helpful. Just like the UCLA website, you first have to click on a section of sounds to zoom in before you can play with the individual features. Once you're zoomed in, you can click on an individual symbol to hear what sound it represents; one advantage to this website is that the sound file plays without taking you to a different screen.

Another advantage is that if you mouse over any words/symbols on the chart, you can find out more information. For instance, if you mouse over a manner or place label on the consonant chart, a definition box will pop up, like this:

Definition box

If you mouse over a symbol in the chart, the IPA descriptors of the symbol and the "common" name will appear in the box over the top of the chart:

Symbol information

Students often get frustrated by words like 'engma' being thrown around when learning the IPA; this website can help those students learn those names while still learning the IPA descriptions associated with them.

3. Iowa's Interactive Sounds of Spoken Language

Screenshot of Iowa's Phonetics Website

If you aren't learning the IPA charts for world languages but are focusing on either American English, Spanish, or German, then you will most likely find this website helpful. From the home page (which you see in the screenshot above), you can click on your language of choice. Clicking on the American English option will take you to a new screen that looks like this:

The Sounds of American English

From this view, you can decide whether you want to look at consonants or vowels and which category you want to explore. For instance, you might click on the "fricative" button and then click on the "/z/" to get to this screen:

Focus on the /z/

Every aspect of this website is interactive. You can play the animation to watch what happens in the sagittal section when the sound in focus is made. You can choose a play-by-play, in which case each stage of the sound is fully described. Or you can listen to sound files on the right-hand side while watching what the outside of the mouth looks like during sound production. This tool is especially helpful for anyone working in the speech pathology field.


4. Interactive Sagittal Section

Screenshot of Interactive Sagittal Section website

Created by Daniel Currie Hall, this website allows you to choose the features of the sound you're working with (e.g., voicing, placement, manner), and the sagittal section on the screen changes to match the requirements, which can help internalize the difference between all those columns and rows in the IPA chart (and, in the end, help with understanding natural classes). After seeing Iowa's website before this one, you may wonder if it really is all that helpful. The answer is yes. This website isn't constrained to sounds in particular languages (but is constrained by types of sounds). Also, the sagittal sections more closely resemble what some students see on exams/homework assignments and might be more helpful.

There are other online interactive IPA tools, such as the University of Victoria's IPA chart and another IPA chart that is simply housed at www.ipachart.com. The goal is for you to find one that you can work with and that helps you understand the material better. Phonetics shouldn't be frightening--it should be fun to explore the sounds of language.

If you have know any other phonetics websites that you feel should be mentioned, leave the website (and the reason you like) in the comments below.

Ling Websites: Phonetics and IPA

This week, my Structures class will be moving into phonetics and learning the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA). Every semester, I tend to share the same websites, so I'm putting them all into one post for my students--and others--to peruse.

1. Ladefoged's IPA Chart

Screenshot of Ladefoged's IPA Chart

UCLA offers a website that has an interactive IPA chart; you can click on sections of the chart to bring them into focus and then click on individual sounds to hear recordings. This is especially helpful for learning sounds not found in English.

2. University of Iowa's 'The Sounds of Spoken Language'

Screenshot of the University of Iowa's articulatory phonetics website

The University of Iowa offers an interactive phonetics experience, in which you can choose whether you want to focus on the sounds of English, German, or Spanish. Once you've selected a language, it shows you animated sagittal sections to demonstrate what is physiologically happening when you make a selected sound. This website is incredibly helpful for anyone trying to learn and remember all the columns/rows of both the consonantal and vocalic IPA charts.

3. Cambridge's Phonetics Focus

Screenshot of Cambridge's phonetics focus website

Cambridge English Online offers a website full of phonetics fun--it has games to help you learn the IPA and the connection between phones and phonemes. It also has games to help you learn to hear the differences between the sounds of English. The only drawback for American students is that it uses British pronunciation; some of the vowels for example words are pronounced differently from what most Americans would use. However, the games are fun, and it is a good website to explore.

4. English Phonetic Transcription

Screenshot of the English Phonetic Transcription website

I don't normally recommend sites like these, but students find them all on their own... You can type any English text into the white box, and this website will turn it into IPA for you (or upside down if you want to see your text from a different angle). Are the IPA transcriptions always accurate? No. Will using it help you learn the concepts behind the IPA, which will in turn allow you to better learn phonology? No. But can it help you check the work you've already done on your transcriptions? Yes. I'd recommend anyone to use this site (or sites like this) sparingly and only as a check-my-work tool.

If you know of any other websites that are helpful for students learning phonetics and IPA, please send them along.