126.138: General Phonetics

For an older version of these pages from past years, go here.

General

Most of the IPA symbols on these pages are still done with itsy-bitsy little graphic files, which don't change size when the rest of your text does. I'm slowly converting over to ordinary Unicode characters.

To make sure your browser can actually show you IPA characters in Unicode, try this test page. The frame on the left should look pretty much the same as the frame on the right -- or even better. If the left-hand frame has characters missing or replaced by a box or a question mark, follow John Well's instructions for making your browser show Unicode IPA characters.

(If you want IPA pages to actually look nice, rather than ugly, good choices for the fonts are SILDoulos and Gentium.)

Announcements

• Final exam on Thursday, December 18, at 6 pm!
• End of term quizzes may be picked up in the department secretary's office in room 514 Fletcher Argue, between 2(ish) and 5 pm.
• I've put up the start of a page on what various kinds of sounds look like on a spectrogram.

Practice

• Broad transcription exercises (no sound)
• Discrimination practice
• Consonant description drill
• Broad transcription reading practice
• Broad and narrow transcription practice (with sound)

Notes

Other

• Fonts: lots of non-English fonts for your computer here, but particularly SIL's IPA fonts (look in the "Roman fonts" section).
• The International Phonetics Association. Don't like having to write your r's upside-down? Become a member and try to outvote the rest of the world during the next round of revisions. You can get the complete up-to-date IPA chart here too (but don't try unless you've got lots of time -- the graphic files are huge).
• Sound files for example passages in the IPA handbook.
• Reading spectrograms: a page in Oregon and pages by our very own Rob.
• links to other phonetics information