ɪn fɪnlən ði ɪntəˈnaʃənɫ fəˈnɛtɪk aɫfəbɪt ɪz juzd ɪn moust laŋgwɪdʒ lœnɪŋ tʰɛkspʊks. as skuɫ kʰɪdz wi wəɹ ɔɫso tʰɔt hau tu ɑˈtʰɪkjʊleit sœtn ɪgˈzɔtɪk-lʊkɪŋ sɪmbɫz laik “θ”. aiv hœd, ðou, ðat in sʌm ʌðə juɹəˈpʰiən kʰʌntɹiz ɪt ɪzənt kʰɔmənli juzd at ɔɫ.
In Finland the international phonetic alphabet is used in most language learning textbooks. As school kids we were also taught how to articulate certain exotic-looking symbols like “θ”. I’ve heard, though, that in some other European countries it isn’t commonly used at all.
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We had to copy vocabulary listings from our textbook into a notebook. Three columns: spelling, pronunciation (in IPA), translation (in German). In both English and French classes. It was pretty stupid because they didn’t *really* teach us IPA well enogh. I think it would have possibly been better if we had discussed the pronunciation of German itself in IPA, too, so we would be able to see which sounds are different in English/French. We didn’t really do that though.
Not at all in school when I went, neither in German nor in English/French classes
Got a bit of a hobby interest in linguistics so I picked up a bit of IPA over the years and have long been preferring it over those stupid cumbersome descriptions with halfway rhyming English words (for example “ö? Well it’s a bit like ‘turn’ but not quite as r-coloured and also not in the Northeast Texan prairie accent, rather like yadda yadda yadda…” when I could just write “øː” and be done with it)
I worked in a research project for a new Russian-German dictionary at university and every single dictionary (several hundreds) we had there used IPA.
The dictionary we wrote used IPA, we had a linguist in IIRC St. Peterburg writing the IPA for our new dictionary.
Every single dictionary I have ever used (German, English, French, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese) has used IPA.
I don’t know any other way to describe spelling than IPA.
For croatian never. For other languages, the only time I recall seeing it in our books was in english for θ vs ð. I don’t think regular people would ever use it or even recognize most of the symbols.
A simplified version was used for vocabulary lists in English classes. I happened to be familiar with it myself, but there was barely any explanation how to read IPA in class, so we mostly had to rely on imitation. Nothing wrong with that, unless there’s not a single native speaker in the room.
How are all the replies German right now.
But here in Belgium: no. We don’t even get taught that it exists except if you choose Latin, then sometimes (but still extremely rare) the teacher refers to it
When I saw the title I honestly thought that your keyboard had broken or that the cat had run over it.
I’ve never seen writing like that. I do remember seeing some words or even just letters spelled this way in English books at school, and it always seemed odd to me because we weren’t taught what sound these characters represented in the first place.
I first learned about the IPA in a college phonetics class back when I thought I wanted to become a teacher. We talked about it very briefly in a college level German class as well, but I still don’t know most symbols.
To my knowledge, I’ve only seen it used in school while learning English. Apart from that, I haven’t used or seen it anywhere else in my life.
…I was mildly confused when I started reading the first half of the title and had to read it multiple times at first.
No it’s not commonly used at all. I’d say most people haven’t even heard of it.
Even though students usually learn a foreign lanuage in secondary school, I don’t think it’s ever used as far as I know.
The only place a schoolchild (or anyone else, for that matter) is likely to see IPA is in a dictionary, or indeed Wikipedia. I imagine few would be able to read it. It’s certainly not something you see in language textbooks
I wasn’t taught it in school anyway.
In the de facto standard glossary and dictionary by the Swedish Academy they use their own phonetic script. E.g. “tjock” is written [çåk´], whereas it would be written [ˈɕɔk] in IPA.
Yeah, it’s used in schools to transcribe English words, although it often only confuses kids rather than clarifies pronunciation, but that’s teachers to blame (not all, some do a better job).
Interestingly, I don’t think it’s used for other languages, or at least I don’t remember writing IPA transcriptions for my German lessons.
We like to think that in Italian pronunciation and spelling match perfectly (they don’t, really, but they are quite close) so phonetic symbols are not very common. When studying foreign languages (including English) they may show up in textbooks but students just write down the pronunciation using Italian spelling and that’s usually a good enough approximation (“is de IPA commonli iusd in ior cauntri?”)
Wasn’t the case 20 years ago, our English teacher might have shown us some basics to help distinguish vowels but it’s not like we were getting full transcriptions of new vocabulary. We certainly had no IPA during German classes where it would’ve helped.
I don’t know about now, but 35 years ago it was used in secondary school. We used it specially to know the different ways each dialect pronounced words, the unvoicing of final consonants and the voicing of final unvoiced consonants in contact with initial vowels or initial voiced consonants, the difference between open and closed vowels… And some dictionaries include phonetic transtriptions using IPA.
Only, out of curiosity, do I sort of have a vague idea – sort of – of the sounds that exist in the languages that I know.
Like it’s not super common, you’re more likely in a language-learning textbook to see an English approximation for pronunciation. If it weren’t for my family’s background, I doubt I’d know how to pronounce [ɬ] for example.
If you were to see it in a textbook, then I imagine it would be described as “HL” or trying to make the unvoiced th (as in think), but moving your tongue to the roof of your mouth, but still blowing.
The only time I ever even saw IPA was in the dictionary. Someone told me it was a pronunciation guide when I was 7 or 8 and I thought they were certifiable. Wasn’t until I saw it again on Wikipedia in my teens and clicked into the article on the alphabet that I even knew what it was. It would be really handy to learn it in school I think, but we never did. I can work some of it out from languages I’ve learned that use the characters but a lot of it is pure gibberish to me
Edit: I actually think the person who told me what it was was Finnish, ironically enough.
Definitely not. The first time I ever saw ipa was in a French dictionary and we were specifically told to ignore it without even being told what it was.
I’d love to learn ipa but any attempts have been short lived. Sadly I don’t have the accent to teach myself. I constantly came across issues and upon further reading, my accent always seemed to be an exception of some sort. I’d love to know someone who shares my accent that could teach me tho bc its honestly so cool
Guess I never got far enough in my language studies having moved out of the county at 13, because we never really used it. It was sort of there in the books, but my teachers glossed over it and just taught pronunciation in word to word bases.
As someone with massive short-term memory and sort of spacial learning difficulties (Työmuistivaikeudet ja hahmotushäiriö) due to ADHD that would be the absolute worst way to teach pronunciation to me. I can’t really handle processing two things at ones, so making sense of the meaning of the word while trying to decipher it’s pronunciation from an unfamiliar style of lettering is just pure torture. What an absolute hell that system is from my perspective.
You know, I’ve been talking a lot about how inaccessible language learning is. I used to think it’s just that i can’t grasp new languages, but I’ve got myself to pass a Swedish course with B1 level requirement with minimal work recentl, and I never studied the language before. I learn fast through repetition, being corrected on my mistakes and observance and immersion. I just can’t for the life of me learn through linguistic rules and systems. I get so caught up trying to learn and remember the linguistic “tools” that I never grasp the language. It’s only when I’ve learned through books and lessons I’ve struggled. English I learned just by being tossed into an English speaking school at 13. Took me 6 months to be fluent enough to express myself in most situations.
Bit of a rant, but just in case any language teachers are around: I hope you take my story to heart. Sometimes knowing grammatic rules by heart, linguistics and the science of it is no help at all. Just muddles it all up. I don’t need to know why something is the way it is, people catch on to innate rules of a language by trial and error. Maybe knowing the science of it works for you, but the world is full of people with all sorts of learning disabilities. We can’t help out brain being different.
IPA to Brits is just that thing that appears under a word when you Google its definition. This is probably the case with the majority of the Anglo sphere.
If you were to actually use the term IPA we would most likely think you’re talking about Indian Pale Ales.
I have run into it and can read it partly because I have a pet interest in linguistics, though I must admit it’s tough to read full sentences like the ones you wrote in it. It exists in some dictionaries here, but we aren’t taught how to read it, probably because we already know how to pronounce the words. Someone else said that Latin students in their country may have it taught, but as a Latin and Ancient Greek student, I can tell you that isn’t the case here