Hey, hey, hey! It's the IPA

Notes 1-27-10

This week, we began our discussion of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet not Indian Pale Ale) with a few exercises and an explanation of some phonetic terms. You can refer to chapter two of our linguistic textbooks if any of my explanations aren’t clear.

Exercise 1

We split into four groups and recorded a designated teller while he/she told a bedtime story. Afterward, the listeners moved to different tellers. This time, the tellers repeated the same story, but with the intention of making it sound like an inspirational tale. This process was repeated in two more contexts – teaching a lesson and giving a eulogy.

What was the objective? To see how tellers change the sound and content of their tales to fit a story type.
We determined that the bedtime stories were marked by:
- repetitive rhythm (as opposed to the ascending voice of the pep talks)
- explanations of characters and events (Do you know what a jellyfish is?)
- soft, quiet volume
- “cute” language (itty bitty, teeny tiny, teensy weensy)

Discussion
How much can we say without actually saying words? We shared exclamations that indicated everything from disgust to admiration. Variance in tone and facial expression helped deliver meaning.

New Concepts :

Voiced sound: sounds produced, in part by the vibrations of the vocal folds. These include [b] as in bat, [d] as in dime, [g] as in goat, [z] as in zoo.

Voiceless sounds: unlike voiced sounds, these are produced when our vocal folds are apart. This means that the air flowing through the larynx will produce minimal vibrations. These include [p] as in pet, [t] as in toad, [k] as in cup, and [s] as in sew.

Nasal sounds: produced in the nasal and the oral cavity. These sounds are the [m] in mad, [n] in nose, and final sound in sing (sorry everyone, haven’t found that phonetic symbol yet).

Stops (aka plosives): sounds created by momentarily cutting off the airstream. The built-up pressure is then release in a burst (think explosion, hence plosive) of sound. Theses stops come in pairs – [p] and [b], [t] and [d], and [k] and [g]. The first of each pair is voiced and the second is voiceless.

Exercise:
We practiced our phonetic recognition with a few rounds of vocal hot potato. This revealed our tendency to confuse visual sameness of words with a phonetic likeness. For example. When trying to match initial consonant sounds we sometimes made the mistake of matching words like kite and knife. Although the spelling of both words begins with a “k”, in phonetic terms one begins with [k] and the other with [n].