Suggestions/tricks for improving transcriptions

Here are a few suggestions which some people have found helpful for getting more accurate broad transcriptions of English.

• Pretend you're someone who can't spell (e.g., an advertising executive). How would you misspell this word if you wanted to deliberately misspell it? For example, you might misspell knight as night or nite -- which gives you some clues about which sounds are really there are which aren't.
• Compare the word to other words whose transcriptions you're more certain of. If two words are homonyms, their transcriptions should be identical. If two words rhyme, their transcriptions should end the same way.
• Decide how many sounds the word has and what the sounds sound like before you worry about which symbols to use for the sounds.
• We read left to right -- there's no law you have to write that way. Don't feel you have to get the symbol for one sound perfect before you move to the next. If you know the first consonant and the last consonant but aren't sure of the vowel in the middle, get the consonants down on paper and worry about the vowel later.
• When you're unsure of an individual sound, consider other words where that sound occurs. For example, if you're not sure what symbol to use for a vowel, what word would you get if you put that vowel between h_d or b_t ?
• Read your transcription back out loud. Make sure it says what you think it says.
• When you read your transcription back out loud, pretend you're a very stupid computer who can't do anything more than play little sound clips one after the other. If the only thing that sounds strange about your reading is the pauses ([d -- ɑ -- ɡ]), then your transcription is probably right. If it sounds like the computer is trying to say a different word or a nonsense word ([d -- o -- ɡ]), you'd better try again.
• Pay attention to what you're doing with your body. Often phoneticians who are trying to transcribe an unfamiliar sound will imitate the sound as closely as they can and then choose the symbol more on the basis of what they're doing with their vocal tract during the imitation than on what it sounds like. If it doesn't feel like an [n], if your tongue body is touching your soft palate rather than your tongue tip touching just behind your teeth, then it's not an [n].
• Practise. Practise. Practise.
  • Do the exercises on the web page.
  • Get some textbooks. Do their exercises too.
  • Transcribe words in your head while waiting for the bus.
  • Write your grocery lists in IPA.
  • Write your diary in IPA.
  • Read stories in IPA whenever you have insomnia.
  • ...