A Learners Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) on one of the most valuable language learning tools. But it’s too complicated for most language learners. However, we still need a method to write pronunciation that is easy to use and easy to remember. This is a proposal.

As a linguist, the IPA is one of the tools that I use all the time. As a language learner, I use it all the time too. In the IPA, each symbol has one and only one pronunciaiton, unlike English. In English a given letter can be pronounced many different ways ; the a has different pronunciaitons in cat, father, and can. In the IPA each sound has one and only one symbol, unlike English. The long a sound (IPA: [a]) is written as o in bother and a in father.

So we can’t rely on the spelling alone when we learn languages, becuase even if the language has a phonetic alphabet, there are still differences between the writing and the way speakers pronounce things. This causes uncertainty for us language leaners and then we aren’t confident in our pronunciation. This makes us less confident when we speak and hurts our progress. So we need a way to write down the pronunciation of words that we want to learn. The IPA is designed for that, but the IPA has a lot of complex symbols that are diffficult to type on phones and on computers so the obstacacles for language learners are many. Also as has been pointed out before, the IPA is then another alphabet that language learner need to learn in addition to the alphabet for thier new language.

Because of these difficulties, I propose the Learners Phonetic Alphabet (LPA) as a learner friendly method for writing pronunciation. In this method, each sound is written in only one way and there are no silent letters. This method is designed for English learners but could easily be extended for other languaegs as well. Following the IPA, phonetic transcriptions will be written in brackets to mark phonetic transcription as different from the normal orthographic form. In the table below you will find proposed LPA transcription for the vowels. The first column has the proposed LPA symbol, then the corresponding IPA symbol, then an example English word in its normal spelling, and finally the pronunciation written in the LPA.

LPA Symbol	IPA Symbol	English spelling	LPA transcription
aa	a	father	[‘faadher]
a	æ	cat	[‘kat]
ii	i	beat	[‘biit]
i	ɪ	bit	[‘bit]
ee	e	bait	[‘beet]
e	ɛ	bet	[‘bet]
uu	u	boot	[‘buut]
u	ʊ	put	[‘put]
oo	o	boat	[‘boot]
o	ɔ	bought	[‘bot]
uh	ʌ/ə	but	[‘buht]
er	ɜ	butter	[‘buhter]
ih	ɨ	roses	[‘roozihz]

This is designed to make things easier for English learners. The vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ are often called long vowels in English instructional materials as such they are transcribed by doubling the character. Thus the symbol is longer and hopefully easier for learners to remember. The vowels /æ/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /ʊ/, /ɔ/ are often called short vowels and thus are written only once to make it easier for learners to remember.

The folowing table is the LPA for the consontants. Note that the symbols ^ is used for aspiration which is an extra puff of air that is often added to sounnds like [p], [t], and [k] at the beginning of English words. The symbol ` means that a sound is unreleased; this means that it is cut off and there is not puff or air or other sound following it.

LPA Symbol	IPA Symbol	English spelling	LPA transcription
^	ʰ	not written	p^at
`|̚|not written| pat`
p	p	pat	[‘p^at]
b	b	boat	[‘boot]
t	t	top	[‘t^aap]
d	d	data	[‘deetaa]
k	k	cat	[‘k^at]
g	g	get	[‘git]
m	m	man	[‘men]
n	n	neck	[‘nek]
ng	ŋ	sing	[‘sing]
f	f	feather	[‘fedher]
v	v	vote	[‘voot]
th	θ	thin	[‘thin]
dh	ð	this	[‘dhis]
s	s	sit	[‘sit]
z	z	zipper	[‘ziper]
sh	ʃ	ship	[‘ship]
zh	ʒ	genre	[‘zhaanruh]
c	tʃ	chip	[‘cip]
j	dʒ	jump	[‘juhmp]
y	j	yes	[‘yes]
w	w	water	[‘water]
r	ɹ	red	[‘red]
l	l	lip	[‘lip]
L	ʟ	milk	[‘miLk]
h	h	happy	[‘hapii]
?	ʔ	uh oh	[‘uh?oow]

Most of the transcriptions are very similar to their orthographic form so this system would not be hard for English learners to learn. There are two kinds of stress that are important for language learning: word stress and sentences stress. Word stress is the emphasis places on a certain sylable in word. This syllables is usuallyl pronounced with a higher pitch, louder, and longer than other syllables in the word. In some language (including English) word stress can be the differences between words for example progress can be a noun or a verb depending in where the stress is placed: proGRESS (verb) and PROgress (noun). As shown in the table below, stress can be marked with a single quote make before the stressed syllable. For longer words, there may be another stressed syllable that is not as loud, etc, as the primary stressed syllable. This secondary word stress can be marked with a comma before the stressed syllable.

In languages like English, stress is also important on the sentence level. Often, the most important words get extra stress. This sentence level stress can be shown by placing a percent sign before the stressed word

Primary word stress	’	progress (V)	[pruh‘gres]
Secondary word stress	,	independance	,indi’pendins
Sentence stress	%	He gave me the book	%‘hii ‘geev ‘mii ‘dhuh %‘buk

Thus the verb progress would be transcribed as [pruh’gres] and the noun would be [‘praagres].

For learners of other languages the system can be externded. The the basic English set, no capital letters are used. This means that speakers can also use capital letters to indicate stress if they want to. For non-English sounds it is connvineint to use capital letters as using only lower-case letters requires the use of a lot of digraphs (two letters to write one sound). The table below shows other non-Englsh vowels (an a few alternatives for English vowels), not that a digraph and a single simbol version is given in cases where a diagraph is needed. Note that some languages contrasst the length of vowels (how long the vowel is pronounced) this can be indicated with the colon.:

LPA Symbol single symbol	LPA digraph	IPA Symbol	Language	Meaning	Orthographic spelling	LPA transcription
:		ː	Arabic	holiday, promise	عِدّ‎ , عِيد	[‘/ii:d], [‘/iid]
&	uh	ə/ʌ	English		butter	b&ter
Y	iu	y	Dutch	expensive	duur	[dYr]/[diur]
2	eu	ø	Dutch	door	deur	[d2r]/[deur]
9	oe	œ	Dutch	house	huis	[h9Ys]/[hoeius]
M	ui	ɯ	Korean	Subject Marker	는	[nMn]/[nuin]

The following table shows examples for non-English consonants and non-phnemic English consonants.

LPA Symbol single symbol	LPA digraph	IPA Symbol	Language	Meaning	Orthographic spelling	LPA transcription
B	bv	β	Spanish
P	pf	ɸ	Spanish
	rr	r	Spanish	dog	perro	[‘perroo]
!		ɾ	Spanish	but	pero	[‘pe!o]
x		x	German	I	ich	[‘ix]
G	gg	ɣ	Dutch	go	gaan	[‘Gaan]/ [‘ggaan]
X		χ	Northern Dutch	eight	acht	[‘aaXt]
͏R		ʁ	French	route	roue	[‘Ruu]
	ny	ɲ	French	prision	ngouf	nyuuf
H		ħ	Arabic	situation	حال	[‘Haal]
|??	ʕ	Arabic	holliday	عِيد‎	[**iiːd]
C		ɕ	Korean	poem	시	[‘Ci]
J		ʑ	Japanese		火事	[‘kaaJi]

The system is certainly incomplete and does not cover every sound that is found in the IPA. It is primary disigned for English lanuage learner, but could easly be used for learning other languages that have similar sounds such as German, Spanish, and French (using some of the additional symbols shown above).

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What do you think? If you have comments join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #learnerspa.

Notes

Note that some of the symbols are taken from X-Sampa which is another IPA system that can be typed without needing special keyboards.

French examples taken from Wikipedia’s French Phonology page.

Other examples come from Wikipedia pages about the uvular fricative, voiceless pharyngeal fricative, and arabic phonology, voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant, and voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant. There may be other sites that were not cited.