Post B24eqUiB4HoZifHIMS by kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com
(DIR) More posts by kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com
(DIR) Post #B24YOYiVz0jeJCjRL6 by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T10:41:24Z
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How does one "learn IPA" ? I'm interested enough in language and accents in a hobby kind of way that I don't think I can avoid it anymore. But I find it extraordinarily intimidating. All those backwards letters and little embellishments...What would one do? Make some flash cards?
(DIR) Post #B24Yd1fL9IB49794QS by brad@1040ste.net
2026-01-08T10:43:48Z
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@futurebird What's the audio equivalent of flash cards?
(DIR) Post #B24YkienhsAfVZYsJE by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T10:45:26Z
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@brad Most phone flash card apps will let you past in audio or photos. Very handy.
(DIR) Post #B24YqI1lcyXEehxaVM by forestfjord@wandering.shop
2026-01-08T10:46:24Z
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@futurebird When I studied linguistics, that program used Peter Ladefoged's textbook introducing phonetics and the IPA, and then I learnt it by writing out all of my notes to myself and etc etc in IPA (much like I did when learning Devanagari, Elvish and other scripts) Maybe something like that?
(DIR) Post #B24YzyKHjPrCRtEqfY by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T10:48:11Z
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I was this conversation about how (to me) it sounds like Issac Asimov says "robit" rather than "robot"But, several people responded that he says it normally, or that he's saying "robut" or something else. Because obviously none of us have the same idea of what would be correct OR how far Asimov deviates from that. No one is "wrong" we need better tools!https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/115850847108654055
(DIR) Post #B24ZBWfIOu6A8OZjpA by jollyorc@social.5f9.de
2026-01-08T10:50:14Z
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@futurebird err.. you just stop drinking it, because all that hops is overrated? (sorry, could not resist, because I have no idea which IPA you're talking about :D )
(DIR) Post #B24ZbAM7y5W2TNpsh6 by brad@1040ste.net
2026-01-08T10:54:49Z
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@futurebird I quite like the approach of focloir.ie to providing pronunciation guides for words in different dialects - a similar thing for IPA would be really cool.
(DIR) Post #B24ZeapC0wjRQv45Qm by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T10:54:31Z
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@u0421793 This is just making me more interested.
(DIR) Post #B24ZfgM8vxtosVzqam by ersatzmaus@mastodon.social
2026-01-08T10:55:41Z
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@futurebird Zoidberg does the same thing in futurama. Yiddishism?
(DIR) Post #B24ZmJLItcR9WvlTqS by abuseofnotation@mathstodon.xyz
2026-01-08T10:56:52Z
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@futurebird It's not hard, we learned in a day at high school.Otherwise, the word "robot" is Russian, the correct prononciation is with "o".
(DIR) Post #B24a4eEBz3KlW8BM7E by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T11:00:13Z
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@ersatzmaus Maybe? Though the most extreme example of people saying "robit" for "robot" I can think of tend to be old radio recordings of guys with a schooled "mid Atlantic" radio voice of the 30s or 40s Asimov is a great example for my "collection of accents" spreadsheet since I don't notice he has an accent unless I'm trying to notice such things. (Not true of, say Bernie Sanders who I notice right away.)Watching the NYC inauguration was fascinating for accents.
(DIR) Post #B24abLlbdtTBokPA7E by ersatzmaus@mastodon.social
2026-01-08T11:06:09Z
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@futurebird Billy West (Z's voice actor) says it was a fusion of George Jessel and Lou Jacobi, so a combination of an old vaudeville style voice and a Yiddish one.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YtjevK2SW0
(DIR) Post #B24anmFgzr3ZR2P3ui by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T11:08:24Z
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@ersatzmaus The mastery this guy has over his voice is amazing.
(DIR) Post #B24azdqe4IL6qULS3U by ersatzmaus@mastodon.social
2026-01-08T11:10:30Z
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@futurebird Professional voice actors are incredible. Have you seen Harry Shearer have a rapid fire conversation with himself between Smithers and Mr Burns? Witchraft, I tells ya. Witchcraft.
(DIR) Post #B24bzlB0v9pTWqUaxM by kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com
2026-01-08T11:21:40Z
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@futurebird Find examples of words transcribed by people speaking roughly the same variety of English as you do, and match symbol to sound. That will get you the basics quickly.
(DIR) Post #B24dFuUi95Op0xyEoS by yomimono@wandering.shop
2026-01-08T11:35:50Z
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@futurebird I learned with flash cards as part of a linguistics class many years ago. IMO the hard part is all the sounds you’ve never used as part of a language before. It’s hard to get my brain to even hear them properly, let alone remember them, and distinguishing them is extremely difficult. Some of them I can produce correctly because I know what my mouth is supposed to do, but I can’t tell them apart from other sounds when I hear them.
(DIR) Post #B24eBSgRhepTYatzSy by dequbed@mastodon.chaosfield.at
2026-01-08T11:46:12Z
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@futurebird There's two parts to it I think: The first is learning the writing system which is a case of memorisation (so you are the better judge what the best system for you is there) and the second part is producing the proper sound for each one. I remember a textbook that had graphics detailing the position/movement of all parts involved in each sound, which was very helpful. Producing the sounds accurately is hard to learn on your own unless you have recording equipment and can listen back.
(DIR) Post #B24eqUiB4HoZifHIMS by kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com
2026-01-08T11:53:40Z
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@futurebird I don't know how much this has actually influenced the pronunciation of the word, but it's possible that the truncated form _bot_ — always pronounced with an unreduced vowel — has influenced how people pronounce the original long form.(No American is ever going to produce anything like the original Czech pronunciation without extensive practice, though, of course.)
(DIR) Post #B24ereHOynB5gTIvce by Klara@drupal.community
2026-01-08T11:53:47Z
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@futurebird I like to learn with examples like songs or so. Then I thought about this dutch linguists poem that includes all the difficulties in english pronunciation, and I thought, if you know IPA, it isn't difficult anymore. So, yes there existes a transcription in IPA for "the chaos" (see link in the text after the video). But I need some more learning too.https://fernsenglish.com/2024/12/19/the-chaos-poem-a-guide-to-ipa-and-english-pronunciation/
(DIR) Post #B24esSFLCjEqeYizLs by GreenSkyOverMe@ohai.social
2026-01-08T11:54:00Z
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@futurebird Here we learn (a subset of) it in fifth grade together with learning English, and then more characters in French class in sixth grade if we pick French and not Latin. So my guess is learn a language with some kind of material that has writing, audio and IPA, so you hear the words and see also the IPA writing.
(DIR) Post #B24eyjNyOUHRXyksJU by carto@mastodon.online
2026-01-08T11:55:09Z
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@futurebird For me, the easy bit was seeing what my own language looks like when transcribed to IPA. I mean, I know how to say stuff, and seeing how it's transcribed helped me connect what I say to the IPA transcription. This was the basics for me.As to other languages and phonemes that don't exist in any of the languages I speak well enough... If I'm really interested, I find examples and listen the pronunciations by a native speaker and look at the transcription.
(DIR) Post #B24fMtAzdzz0rWCf3Y by itnomad@ruhr.social
2026-01-08T11:59:27Z
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@futurebirdI am still learning, but my go-to reference is https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/IPA_charts_EI/IPA_charts_EI.htmlWhat I like is that they have sound samples!
(DIR) Post #B24fs7ql8bjHLgdLwO by HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
2026-01-08T12:05:08Z
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@futurebird @catsalad An IPA description of your own spoken language/dialect (or as close as you can get) helps to get started, then it's probably a lot of sitting on Wikipedia pages, listening to samples (it's good to listen to a bunch of different language pronounciations of the same symbol sometimes, you may find out your understanding was too narrow - and then you have "traditional" notations, like /ʌ/ that's actually more like /ɐ/ in many Englishes), placing the sounds on the charts, trying to pronounce them yourself from the descriptions…And don't be discouraged if some things remain unclear and weird, as others said, there's a _lot_ of sounds humans can make that any particular one of us has never been tuned into as a child, and the very principle behind some of them can absolutely feel wtf even as you read it for the twentieth time over a couple years
(DIR) Post #B24glTLYum0bwmQtnM by hgfernan@ursal.zone
2026-01-08T12:15:09Z
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@futurebird That's an interesting point: maybe there's not a canonical way of saying the phonemes (or sounds) that the International Phonetic alphabet intends to represent.It seems that Gboard, the Android keyboard utility can be used to pronounce IPA phonemes. And more specialized apps like Pronunroid can be more precise.
(DIR) Post #B24gs2Vv4r7sklPPwe by morst@toad.social
2026-01-08T12:16:22Z
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@futurebird when I was a toddler I learned it from a TV show that they broadcast. But I grew up in the Midwest speaking pretty standard sounding Flat Midwestern English, and found out later that they stopped the show because people all over the country didn’t all talk like us! It didn’t work well for thick New England, new yawk, or southern accents for instance.
(DIR) Post #B24hdkx9feVIBotw4O by willyyam@mastodon.social
2026-01-08T12:24:54Z
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@futurebird A phenomenon related to this, I think, is that orthography is more subjective than people assume.Get people with different accents, birth languages spell onomatopoeia (an example, not the actual word, eg "woof"), and you'll see it really starkly.
(DIR) Post #B24hz9BAnHbRPHer0y by knowattitude@m.ai6yr.org
2026-01-08T12:28:50Z
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@futurebird this might be helpfulhttps://ankiweb.net/shared/info/81778780
(DIR) Post #B24iAGlUvj3E7Sx5n6 by epicdemiologist@wandering.shop
2026-01-08T12:30:48Z
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@futurebird @brad I'd think the ideal method would be an app that speaks a word, and you try to enter the correct IPA characters; if you fail, it shows you the correct ones. Surely that's out there somewhere.
(DIR) Post #B24iXKsLoUDJWp9l0S by karl@infosec.exchange
2026-01-08T12:35:02Z
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@futurebird I half learned it incrementally. Read things you know how to pronounce in IPA then repeat until you can read English in IPA. With that as a base you can learn new sounds outside of English and map them to their IPA counterpart, it will look less overwhelming.
(DIR) Post #B24iu60HH1wi40iVl2 by tkinias@hcommons.social
2026-01-08T12:39:07Z
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@futurebird FWIW I think he’s using the schwa vowel here, which is basically defined by being somewhat indeterminate—so /ˈroʊbət/ (ROH-bət in Wikipedia notation)
(DIR) Post #B24kJLUQvt07HtQTDc by adriano@lile.cl
2026-01-08T12:33:48Z
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@epicdemiologist @futurebird @brad Something like https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/81778780 with Anki?
(DIR) Post #B24kJMjiIYol9ZaBfs by futurebird@sauropods.win
2026-01-08T12:54:55Z
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@adriano @epicdemiologist @brad *.apkg is a new file format to me but I’m very excited about it. Are there any clean, ad-free iphone or ios app you know of to use such flash card files? (if not no worries I plan on learning more about this kind of data structure— it’s something I’ve needed for some time)
(DIR) Post #B24lOVSHPRSDb2RXyC by adriano@lile.cl
2026-01-08T13:06:59Z
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@futurebird I'm sorry, but I have no idea. I only know of Anki indirectly by way of WaniKani, which I use for studying kanji. @epicdemiologist @brad
(DIR) Post #B24s0JAO968EDHU1b6 by phl@mastodon.social
2026-01-08T14:21:06Z
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@futurebird I'd honestly just go with the Wikipedia page and also the Phonology of $LANG page of some language whose sounds you're familiar with.There's different levels of precision with IPA, but unless you're neck deep in specifics you'll never see all the funny embellishments anyway. The basics should be enough.
(DIR) Post #B24xERa69lOA8U4JhA by thealexstewart@mastodon.online
2026-01-08T15:19:41Z
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@futurebird When I read stuff on Wikipedia, and it's of a different language, I love checking the IPA of how to pronounce it. I wish they would add the "hover to show pronounciation" thing for languages other than English
(DIR) Post #B24yiiwwFHyce1kq4O by tortuguita@sfba.social
2026-01-08T15:36:20Z
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@futurebird I found some anki flash cards that already exist https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/81778780No idea on the effectiveness of flash cards for IPA learning though
(DIR) Post #B250z73yYlN1yNzMSO by stevegis_ssg@mas.to
2026-01-08T16:01:44Z
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@futurebird The IPA pages on wikipedia are pretty good and have clickable links to hear the sounds.Seconded that it helps to know the names of the parts of the mouth so that things like "alveolar affricate" will make sense.
(DIR) Post #B25LY94J5swzPY7r8q by luke@mastsocial.de
2026-01-08T19:52:09Z
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@futurebird Leaving some resources I've used in the past:IPA chart: "cheat sheet"https://www.ipachart.comLearnIPA: explanations and exercises by University of Sheffieldhttps://learnipa.github.ioParatrans: English practice texts with line-by-line IPA transcript and audiohttp://blogjam.name/paratrans/A Course in Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged: old-school online book with a BUNCH of exerciseshttps://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/contents.html
(DIR) Post #B25ZVjQAsTqAe965w0 by jabolotai@infosec.exchange
2026-01-08T22:28:36Z
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@futurebird Lingthusiasm has an episode with some good learning resources, https://lingthusiasm.com/post/159237203511/lingthusiasm-episode-6-all-the-sounds-in-all-the
(DIR) Post #B2ErScG4bFhb9yfy88 by lipow@norden.social
2026-01-13T10:02:08Z
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@futurebird While listening to my (adult) kid practice for their linguistics class on this I remembered your question and got their recommendation: https://community-courses.memrise.com/community/course/317584/articulatory-phonetics/ - they use that at uni, but it is open to the public, you just need an account (sorry if it has already been suggested, I gave up scrolling through the answers after a while :))