00:00Hi everybody and welcome to Rude English. My name's Ed and my aim with these videos is to teach you real English that native speakers use.
00:09And today we're going to be talking about phonetics. Some of you might already be familiar with phonetics, for others it will be completely new.
00:18Phonetics is the best way to understand English pronunciation so if you want to understand native speakers perfectly or if you want to sound like a native speaker then don't go anywhere because you don't want to miss this video.
00:33So, what is the International Phonetic Alphabet or the IPA for short?
00:46Well, the IPA is a collection of symbols which represent the sounds of a language.
00:53In English there are 44 sounds which make up the language and these can be represented by 44 different symbols.
01:02These symbols can be arranged in a table like this.
01:06The position of each symbol in the table tells us how the sound is produced.
01:11Lots of the symbols look like the letters of the English alphabet.
01:15Don't let that confuse you because they actually represent different sounds.
01:19In the top left we have the single vowel sounds, also known as the monothongs.
01:25And you'll notice that there are some small dots next to some of the symbols.
01:30These two dots mean that it's a long vowel sound.
01:33So the sound lasts for longer than average compared to the other vowel sounds.
01:38The sounds in the top row are all produced with the mouth partially closed.
01:42And the sounds on the bottom row are all produced with the mouth open.
01:46The sounds on the left are all produced with the tongue towards the front of the mouth.
01:51And the sounds on the right are produced with the tongue towards the back.
01:55The sounds in the middle are produced with the tongue and the mouth in the middle position.
01:59Next we have the diphthongs, or the double vowel sounds.
02:04And these sounds transition between two single vowel sounds.
02:08The single vowel sounds that they transition between are obvious from the cymbals.
02:14Below the vowels we have the consonant pairs.
02:17Each pair is produced with the mouth in the same position.
02:21The only difference is that one is unvoiced, which means we produce the sound just by using the flow of air through the mouth.
02:30And the other is voiced, so we use our vocal cords to produce the sound.
02:36Finally, on the bottom row we have the single consonants.
02:41These are all produced with the mouth in a unique way.
02:45And you can see that most of them are voiced, so we use our vocal cords to produce the majority of them.
02:52So why do we need phonetics?
02:54We already have an English alphabet.
02:57Why do we need another collection of symbols to represent the sounds?
03:02It's a good question.
03:03So let's look at some examples and I think afterwards it will be clear exactly why phonetics can be useful to understand pronunciation.
03:13How do we pronounce these four words?
03:16Are they all pronounced differently?
03:20Maybe some of them are the same.
03:22What do you think?
03:23They are all pronounced in exactly the same way.
03:27They are all pronounced pause.
03:30So these four words, they are all spelt differently, but they have the same pronunciation.
03:36And words which are spelt differently but have the same pronunciation are called homophones.
03:42And there are quite a lot of homophones in English.
03:46Let's look at another example.
03:47How do we pronounce this word?
03:50Well, I'll tell you.
03:53We pronounce it Tia or Taya.
03:57So actually, it's two different words.
04:01Two words which have the same spelling but a different pronunciation.
04:06These are called heteronyms in English.
04:08And there are quite a lot of them in English.
04:12Not as many as homophones, but enough to cause confusion.
04:16So this begs the question.
04:18If some words are spelt the same, but pronounced differently.
04:23And others are pronounced the same, but spelt differently.
04:27Then is English spelling a good indication of English pronunciation?
04:33No.
04:35English spelling doesn't accurately reflect English pronunciation.
04:40And this is why, if you really want to understand English pronunciation, the best and the most accurate way is to use phonetics.
04:49So how can phonetics help us exactly?
04:51Well, they can help us to understand minimal pairs.
04:55Minimal pairs are a pair of words which differ by just one sound.
05:00And these can cause problems with new students.
05:02For example, seat and seed.
05:06You can see from the spelling and the phonetic spelling that they are different.
05:11But they sound very similar and this can cause confusion.
05:15Phonetics can also help us to understand connected speech.
05:19Connected speech describes how sounds transform when native speakers speak naturally.
05:27For example, in the phrase, would you like a cup of tea?
05:31When I speak slowly, it's easy to understand.
05:35But when I speak naturally, listen to how the sounds transform.
05:40Would you like a cup of tea?
05:43Connected speech is one of the main reasons that students find it difficult to understand native speakers.
05:49So phonetics can help you to understand how sounds transform when we speak naturally.
05:55And they can help you to understand native speakers.
05:58Finally, phonetics can help us to understand different accents.
06:03For example, the animal horse.
06:07For students who learnt American English, they can have trouble understanding this word.
06:13Because in British English, we don't pronounce the R sound.
06:18Whereas in American English, they always pronounce the R sound.
06:23So horse, in American English, sounds more like horse.
06:28Phonetics can help us to understand and identify these differences.
06:33And avoid confusion when we're talking to people with different accents.
06:38So that's all for today.
06:39It was just a brief introduction to phonetics.
06:43Like I said, they're the best way to understand English pronunciation.
06:47And I use them a lot in my lessons.
06:49And I will use them a lot in future videos as well.
06:52So if you really want to understand British pronunciation,
06:56then please like this video, subscribe and stay tuned for more videos in the future.
