Linguists have figured out producing the sounds of languages down to a science. They've defined each sound unambiguously by how it is produced physically, and they've made the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that allows you to correctly pronounce any word in the world (with some training of course)! For questions, contact Scott Hajek (group 119).

The Chart: International Phonetic Alphabet

Sections in this Page:

1. Help Me! How do I pronounce these Symbols?
2. How do I type the IPA symbols?
3. How do I teach the IPA?
4. Teaching Trouble Sounds for Thai Learners of English
   

Help Me! How do I pronounce these symbols?

Check out the following phonetics help resources:

• Phonetics: The Sounds of Spoken Language - The University of Iowa provides an online tool for not only hearing the sounds of the IPA symbols, but seeing them as well. You can see the symbol and hear it pronounced alone or in the context of a word. This site's videos and animations of the production of these sounds are what make it the best resource online. The videos show you a real person making the sounds. The animations give you a fluid vision of what's going on inside the mouth. You can also break it down for step-by-step instructions of how the sounds are produced. The only downside to this site is that it covers only the sounds found in English, Spanish, and German. Sorry, volunteers in Thailand; it's missing those sounds that are frustrating you! But it is great for helping your Thai colleagues pronounce English better.
• Online Audio of the IPA - Go online and hear the sounds represented by the symbols. It includes sounds from all languages, so volunteers can come here to hear those tricky sounds in Thai. Downsides are it doesn't have animations, and you have to be online while you're using the site. For a similar tool that you can use offline, see Speech Tools (next).
  
• Speech tools - Produced by the SILorganization (Summer Institute of Linguistics). This is a software package containing the three tools mentioned below. Download & install the whole Speech Tools package (131 MB), or follow the links below to download a specific tool from the package.
• IPA Help (29.4 MB) - Learn how to recognize and pronounce the sounds of the IPA. Though this resource lacks animations and videos like the ones provided by the University of Iowa, it has three distinct advantages:
1. it has all of the sounds and symbols from every language imagineable;
2. you can install it on your computer so you don't need internet access while you use it
3. it is 100% legitimately FREE!
• Speech Analzyer (18 or 43 MB, depending on your system) - Record audio samples of someone speaking, and analyze it to look at the waveform, the tones, and other properties of their speech. You can look at these graphed characteristics of the sound and listen to the synchronized playback of the audio. This can be particularly useful for learners ofa tonal language. You can record a native speaker's voice with their correct tones. Then you can record your own attempts at pronouncing the words, and check how closely your tones match.
• Phonology Assistant - This is a databasing tool to help linguists find patterns in the sounds of a language in order to develop writing systems for languages that don't have one yet. Volunteers in Thailand will probably not find any practical use for this. (Phonology Assistant is not yet available for separate download)

How do I type the IPA symbols?

If you want to type the symbols of the IPA, you need an IPA font and an IPA keyboard setting. Then, if you want others to be able to view them on their computers, they either need the IPA font, or they need to view the document as a PDF.

• IPA Font - Follow the download and installation instructions on this page. If you have trouble wading through the documentation, here are the direct links to the font files: .zip format | .exe format
• IPA Keyboard Setting - Much like you can change keyboard settings and type in English, Thai, Spanish, etc., you can also type in IPA. You must download and install the keyboard setting (view web page or just get the file). If you find manuals helpful, see the full documentation. Otherwise, here's the straight skinny:

1. Unzip the archived file.
2. Go in the 'ipa10' folder
3. run 'setup.exe'
4. If you don't already have the language bar on your computer set up, go to Start > Control Panel > Regional and Language Options. Switch to the 'Languages' tab
5. Under 'Text services and input languages', select 'Details'
6. Make sure that 'IPA Unicode...' is listed under the English keyboard
7. At the bottom, under Preferences, click on 'Language Bar'
8. Check the box for "Show the Language Bar on the desktop" and click OK
9. Click OK out of all the windows and menus

• Typing - Now that you've installed the font and the keyboard, open the document you want to type in. Change the font to Doulos SIL (or whatever SIL IPA font you've installed). Then find the Language Bar on your desktop or in your taskbar (the blue strip at the bottom right in Windows). Switch to English language, and click the picture of the keyboard to select the IPA keyboard. See the documentation for directions about which keystrokes will give you the IPA symbols you want.
• Sharing your Document - No one's computer can display IPA symbols by default. If you give someone your document with IPA symbols, it will look like irrelevant pictures from the Wingdings font unless they have installed the IPA font, OR unless they receive the document as a PDF file
• IPA Font - See above to tell your friend or colleague how to install the right font
• PDF Files - Files ending in .pdf will look just like the document on the computer that created them. The reason is that the PDF file has all the font definitions stored in the file itself instead of relying on the computer for the fonts. If you have software to create PDF files, you can convert your word processing document into PDF.
• Note of Caution: The file must be converted to PDF using a computer that does have the correct font on it. PDF-making software has to find the correct font on the creating computer to be able to store it in the PDF file. Otherwise, the PDF will have the funky, incorrect symbols on every computer it's viewed on.
  

How do I teach the IPA?

Okay, so now you're hot stuff and understand the IPA yourself and understand how helpful it can be. How can you show Thai teachers its importance and teach it to them? Go to the Phonetics Training page for ideas.

Teaching Trouble Sounds to Thai Learners of English

In Easy Terms

See the "English Pronunciation for Thais" page for an explanation in layman's terms about tricky English sounds.