Have You Ever “Read” English Sounds?

Hi, this is Jiro.

Have you ever “read” English sounds?

It sometimes happens that a learner’s English pronunciation suddenly changes dramatically. I have seen it happen with my own students, young and old.

Some ladies in their sixties suddenly got much better at pronunciation — and even began to groove while singing English songs!

You may want to know what happened.

The answer is surprisingly simple.

They learned to read the IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet — what we usually call 発音記号 in Japan.

You may immediately react:

“I’ve never learned it!”

“I can’t read it!”

“It looks so weird and difficult!”

And that reaction is perfectly natural. Most Japanese students rarely learn phonetic symbols properly at school.

In fact, I myself hardly ever taught them to my students. To tell the truth, I didn’t know enough about them myself!

But I have changed my mind.

I now think IPA is well worth learning.

The first reason is that I have seen with my own eyes how effective it can be.

What is so special about IPA?

It lets you see sounds.

If all you have is the sound itself, it can be difficult to form a clear image of it. IPA gives that invisible sound a visible shape.

You can hear the sound — and at the same time, you can see it.

The second reason is that IPA is not nearly as difficult as it looks.

There are roughly 40 to 50 symbols used for English sounds, but Japanese learners do not have to start from scratch. Many of them — [d], [t], [e], [i] and so on — already look quite familiar.

And the really tough ones?

Perhaps only five or six.

Imagine an enemy army fifty soldiers strong. Most of them are soldiers you hardly need to worry about. A smaller group deserves your attention, and only five or six are really formidable enemies.

IPA is a little like road signs, too.

There are a great many road signs, but in everyday life you depend on a relatively small number of important ones: speed limit, no parking, no overtaking, one way, and so on. You don’t have to begin by memorizing every color and geometric shape in the entire system.

And above all, we Japanese are already familiar with thousands of kanji!

Compared with that, fifty phonetic symbols should be a piece of cake.

Well… at least they should be!

So where should you begin?

Start with just a few important sounds. Five or six will do. Look them up in a dictionary or some other reference and get familiar with them.

Even that may make a surprising difference to your pronunciation.

If I were helping you start more systematically, I might begin with these.

① The different English “ア” sounds

Take [ɑ], for example.

It is made with the mouth much more open than Japanese 「ア」:

far [fɑ:r]
farm [fɑ:rm]

Then there is [æ], a sound somewhere between [ɑ] and [e]. Japanese people sometimes compare it to a characteristic sound of the Nagoya dialect, especially as spoken by older people:

bat [bæt]
cat [kæt]
Sam [sæm]

Then [ʌ], a short 「ア」 sound. It is rather like the little “Ah!” you make when you suddenly remember something you have to do:

but [bʌt]
come [kʌm]
sun [sʌn]
up [ʌp]

And then there is [ə], the wonderfully lazy, vague 「ア」 sound. Other vowels often turn into something like this when English is spoken quickly and naturally:

again [əgen]
and [ənd]

English vowels like being lazy!

② Easily confused consonants

Next, learn some pairs that Japanese learners often confuse.

For example, [tʃ] and [dʒ].

[tʃ] is like the consonant sound in Japanese 「チャ・チュ・チョ」:

chat [tʃæt]
change [tʃeindʒ]
chip [tʃip]

[dʒ] is its voiced partner:

jet [dʒet]

Or take [ʃ] and [s].

[ʃ] is like the consonant in 「シャ・シュ・ショ」:

show [ʃou]
she [ʃi:]
ship [ʃip]

while [s] is the consonant in 「サ・ス・セ・ソ」:

so [sou]
sea [si:]
sip [sip]

Just brushing up these few key sounds can begin to change your pronunciation.

So don’t be frightened by all those strange-looking symbols.

You don’t have to master fifty of them at once.

Start with five or six.

The great thing about IPA is very simple:

It lets you see English sounds with your own eyes.

And once you can see them, you may begin to hear — and pronounce — English differently, too.

Happy English learning!