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Oh man. This is great. But I just realized that I'll have to return to the IPA only AFTER I finish learning Cyrillic. Some letters are very similar and that's just going to get confusing
Something I"ve learnt while conlanging: Vowels don't like being close to each other, so they'll usually have a relative equal distance between each other. You're probably not going to have a language with /ɑ æ a ä ɐ/ and /i/. It's good to keep in mind, because it also helps pronouncing things as well, since things are relatively distant.
I couldn’t express how much I appreciate this video, because of the distinguished connection between English language and/ to Italian. My native language is Romanian. For me it’s easier to learn Latin languages than English. Thank you 🙏 so much!
Amazing video! One little comment though: - There are multiple types of rounding: protruded and compressed. Rounded back vowels are usually protruded (a notable exception is the Japanese /u/, which is compressed). Rounded front vowels are typically compressed (a notable exception is /y/ in Swedish though, which is protruded). - Back unrounded vowels and front rounded vowels tend to be at least somewhat centralized, that is to say, pure back unrounded vowels and pure front rounded vowels are rare.
Yes and Swedish round compressed vowels for most varieties tend to be overounded almost as if you are ready to whistle, it can even lead to a slight frictation.
/y/ in French may be compressed in the standard variety, but /y/ in gallo-italic dialects, which has a similar enough distribution, is generally protruded, and the tongue is slightly lower than in French (this is generally also true for /i/)
Because of this video, I went online to check the different IP charts for Standard German from Germany (Bundesdeutsch) and Swiss German dialects (specifically the one from Zurich and Bern). The differences are shown so strongly through those charts. It is so fascinating! Thank you for that!
I'm generally really bad at reading vowels in IPA and at hearing the smaller differences between them. This video really helped clear a lot of it up. Thank you
As an Italian who spoke Spanish as a foreign language, when I say vowels in Spanish I use the same vowel I would use in Italian, if the word is a cognate of the 2 languages, like perdono->perdon. Now that you pointed out that Italian has 7 vowels and Spanish only 5, (I never realized that)I will pay more attention when I speak. Great lesson, as usual. Thank you
Spanish may only have 5 vowel phonemes, but many varieties have positional allophones (at least the mid and low vowels), based on following consonants, preceding or following semivowels,,whether the syllable is open or not, etc. In Andalusian Spanish, where coda s is either lenited to h (before a consonant) or deleted (at the end of the phrase), mid-low varients of e and o have basically become phonemic. So it's more tricky than that, and you might want to look into phonetic realisations of specific dialects.
@@pawel198812I've noticed /e/ in close syllables tends to sounds pretty similar to Italian close mid [e], for instance, like in the word "dedo". At least for most speakers
@@PodcastItaliano From what I've noticed, in Peninsular Spanish, e and o are higher in open syllables and in syllables with coda s or n, and they are lower when part of a diphthong or triphtong and in closed syllables (except before s or n). I don't know whether they approach the cardinal positions of high-mid and low-mid, though. The 'a' is central most of the time, but can be slightly farther back before x, l, rr, or u (not exactly like ɑ, but noticeably different). I'm bound to have missed at least some things. PersonalLyn, I find distinguishing consonants much easier
Luke, it's the second week of university classes here in Tokyo and literally a few hours ago I was teaching the IPA to freshmen in my class on writing systems -- I'd love to show them this video! When we went over vowels, my New York-born self was very careful to make "standard" [ɑ:] and [ɔ:] sounds, though I told them they were free to imitate me next time I said [ɔə] or [ʊə] as we cultured Northeasterners like to do :)
Thank you! IPA symbol for *ä* is central vowel, but the letter *ä* used in the ortography for example in Finnish and Estonian represents front vowel *æ* , like in the Finnish word *päättää* 'to decide'. Dots above letter show that it is front vowel, and this convention comes from Swedish and German.
Yeah. The fact that usually the two dots represent fronting, but in IPA they represent centralizing, is quite confusing. Some people use a for the central vowel and æ for the front open vowel to protest this.
@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm Yes, I understand it, at least for us who use the letter ä in writing of our native language, that convention feels "unnatural". 🙂 For example Finno-Ugric linguists use their own transcription system alongside IPA.
@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm also, æ/a/Œ is the only rounding series to have three characters with the "default" being the half-rounded version that normally is indicated through diacritics
@@bacicinvatteneaca Yes, I think so. I probably would substitute it with *ä* while speaking German. When that area of vowel diagram is not crowded in Finnish, pronouncing vowel "low enough" is sufficient for it to be regognized as vowel phoneme *ä* , not *e* (we have minimal pairs like *pesen* 'I wash' vs. *pesän* 'nest's (genitive)', but nothing in between). Same with consonants like *s* , even if I would pronounce it voiced or more hissing than typical, it would still be recognized as *s* , because we have only one phonemic sibilant.
I love these deep dives into phonology, especially in ways that are accessible to people who aren't already familiar with the inner workings of linguistics! I could (and do) spend hours researching the precise realizations of phonemes, but it can be really difficult to explain phonology to the layman. Materials like this are amazing
Thanks! Well, I hope I’ve also adequately conveyed that I may not be hitting these vowels precisely but right, since they defy precise realization almost by definition haha. So it is pretty hard. And then trying to understand ancient phonology accurately?! Haha! Lots of challenges. But it is fun
@@polyMATHY_Luke and then of course, having to deal with people who have misunderstandings of how language works because of either ethnic nationalism or simple ignorance is always a strange mixture of entertaining and exhausting
I love the IPA alphabet and use it frequently for my job since I'm a news presenter. Unfortunately, even not all of my colleagues have the knowledge to use it. And you even use the different signs [r], [ɾ], [ʀ] and [ʁ] for the different r-sounds. Who else does this? I'm so excited! I really enjoyed your video once again 🤗
27:32 you might've thought about the Ukrainian "син". The Russian cognate is "сын", and "ы" is realized more to the back. "Син" is not really a word in Russian, but if read aloud, "и" would be very fronted.
it's between i and y and more centered I would say. As in earlier High German ü and i was interchangablely used as some wrote Hülfe and some Hilfe. this vowel sound got lost in German and is replaced by lax i.
He is technically correct as сын is supposedly "[sɨn]" in standard Russian according to IPA. However, as someone who has studied Russian and has Russian relatives, the IPA for "ы" as /ɨ/ doesn't sound right at all, and that vowel also appears to be realized more back and is different when stressed or unstressed.
Awesome timing, Luke! I've been wanting to learn about IPA for a few months now with the goal of improving my Latin pronunciation. And what would you know, my favourite language channel releases a 40 minute video about it on the same day as my 30th birthday! Gratias, Magister!
Native Italian speaker here, replying to your request on how I perceive the vowel in alteza. Let me give you a bit of context, which you may find interesting. I grew up in the '80s and '90s, and there where already many football players coming from Spanish speaking countries, who would then give interviews in Italian. So I got used to their accent. The vowels (particularly the e and the o) did sound different, though I never quite understood how. I would have described them as "faster" or "silkier" (piu' vellutate) or "neutral". Among friends we would imitate their accent, so I am not an isolated case. Therefore, hearing "alteza", I hear the different spanish sounding vowels. And now, when I imitate what I understood of the spanish accent, I do notice that I don't make an open e/o or a closed e/o, but something in the middle. I can try and put the Italian 'e's, and they both sound wrong. So you video has been very illuminating!!! 😀 I also believe that it was easier for me to pick up the spanish vowels because I heard spanish people speaking in Italian (as opposed to just hearing spanish). As you know, people from different regions pronounce the vowels differently already, so picking up a regional accent is mostly changing the vowels (though some of the consonants change as well...). So I learned those sounds essentially as regional variations of Italian. I actually wonder whether that could be a teaching technique: instead of learning new sounds in a new language, you first learn new sounds in a familiar language. Makes sense! You also greatly confused me with the pronunciation of "perche' ". I always thought that the first e is closed and the second open. In fact, if I say the word by itself it comes out like that. I'd think it's because I am from the north, but many example pronunciations on the web also sound like that. However, I am noticing that if I use it in sentences, the finale 'e' changes: sometimes open and sometimes closed, probably depending on the intonation/stress and what comes after. Interesting!
Ciao Gabriele, thanks for the comment. Yes, I suppose my question ought to have been directed to Italian speakers who use the native sound system of Lazio or Tuscany, which is mostly or entirely the same as standard Italian. Many Italians like yourself don’t use the standard Italian vowel system - there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, it just shows I should have been more careful in my question in the video. In standard Italian, “perché” has both vowels as closed. The opening of either vowel is indicative of a non-standard variant. Whenever we have é or ó in standard orthography, this means a closed vowel, while è and ò mean an open vowel.
30:02 As an Italian, i’ve always thought that the Spanish e sounded a lot like my close-mid. Now that I’ve found out it’s a true-mid though, i can also perceive it as an open-mid if i focus! What you said about “perdón” applies to me. There really are some words where i would naturally perceive an open-mid instead of a close-mid due to similarities between the languages.
As a native Portuguese speaker, I have a similar experience. I generally interpret the Spanish e and o sounds as close-mid. I tend to hear an open-mid in certain when the Portuguese cognate has open-mid quality: cielo/céu, hierro/ferro etc. Not always, though..
How did you hear "alteza"? The first time, I heard it as close mid, but all the times after that, having heard what the prof. said about it, I hear it as open mid! (ps my Italian is a sort of "napoletano pulito", where the open mid is less open than in Tuscan.)
Luke has the ability to make any subject that may at first seem abstruse for most of us really interesting and crystal clear. Phonetics or Life on Mars, whatever; it becomes so fascinating that it cheers me up.
5:00 Absolutely phantastic and without watching the rest of the video, which I will do after writing this: I (German, where the high front round sound y is pretty common, written as ü) once was working in Saudi Arabia on a construction site for a few weeks. There were a dozen guys from India and one local working with me and one day the Arab told me in front nof the Indians, that he intended to visit Munshen pretty soon. It took me quite some time to realize, he was talking about München. Munich. I told him, how to pronounce it correctly, he did not manage to say ü. I told him exactly what you explain here. Say i, then keep everything inside your mouth as it is, do not move it a millimeter, but pull your lips together as if you wanted to say o and you will automatically say ü. Did not work. Then I told him, say o and while doing so rise your tongue and again you will come to the ü. Also did not work. An hour later I walked past the Indian guys, who were squatted down in their comfort position (it is beyond me, my knees would explode after a minute) and I heard them make this i-ü-o-ü excercise. They actually thought that was pretty amusing and they wanted to show off in front of the local by being able to do it. Pretty soon I had a handful of highly capable ü-speakers.
In Tamil, the upside-down m sound (high back unrounded) is an allophone of /u/ used word-finally, so anything ending with a short /u/ sound, like தூங்கு (verb meaning sleep) ends with that sound
5:41 /y/ is also available in Tamil. It's called குற்றியலிகரம்(kutriyalikaram. Literally, shortened i) as in நாடியாது (நாடு+யாது). 6:30 /ɯ/ is called குற்றியலுகரம்(kutriyalukaram. Literally, Shortened u).
I'm a native French speaker, and in my regional accent, [e] and [ɛ] are on the verge of complete fusion into [e̞]. I can still make the difference between the two quite easily but I noticed that in my day to day speech, they are almost the same sounds. I found those phenomenons very fascinating. I'd be interested to know if the opposite case (where one vowel is splitting into two different ones) can be witnessed !
In a dialect of my native tongue, /ɛ/ is (apparently, according to Wikipedia) splitting into /e/ and /ɛ/ in some cases - it does not happen in the standard dialect, which I speak, but I was very surprised to realize that the difference in meaning it causes is discernible to me regardless.
This video is so good! I’ve been longing for an IPA walkthrough ever since I started following your videos! Not taking linguistics in college has become a serious regret of mine 😭
Thanks so much! If able, please share it widely; if it doesn’t get too many views I’ll think twice about covering this topic here, and just limit it to patrons
Yolo! A huge thanks to you!!! I'm a Brazilian-Port. teacher and often times, when teaching our vowels to a SL student, I have some issues trying to help them out with a more accurate pronunciation. Your video is not only very educative, but also extremely detailed and scientific. It is of great help and I'll certainly start mentioning it to my students and other language enthusiasts ;)
If there are any other Sicilians watching: the Italian we speak has a five-vowel system, which means we only have [ä], [ɛ], [i], [ɔ] and [u]. We don't use [e] and [o] (phonemically at least). I don't exactly know about other southern variants, but I believe this vowel system extends beyond Sicily and is shared by a big portion of southern native Italian speakers.
Τέλειο!! Ήταν μπελάς να τα μάθω όλα αυτά! Έβλεπα τις ορολογίες και ΕΦΡΙΖΑ (φρικαρα)!!! 😂 Αλλά με βοηθήσατε παρά πολύ που εξηγήσατε τόσο απλά τι σημαίνει η κάθε λέξη (πχ αυτό με το roundness, frontness, etc)!❤️
Wow. You never cease to amaze me, Luke. I watched every second of this video 🐝. I find phonology to be so interesting. Having Raph as my Latin teacher means I get to learn from the master! I find it interesting how Portuguese also has a distinction between closed /e/ and open /ɛ/, but both vowels are phonemically/theoretically more open. So what I tend to do is "relax" the vowels a bit more. I really hope you'll make a video about consonants. Grātiās summās tibi referō, Luciī!
This is fascinating! My native language is French, therefore I use both e and ɛ and both o and ɔ, and I learnt Spanish to an advanced level. I've always processed and heard those sounds as close-mids in Spanish, even though I pronounce them correctly as true mids in Spanish, but now that I think about it more carefully, I notice a clear distinction! By the way, some Latin American varieties of Spanish do use close-mids, and I find it strange: it's as if those sounds were more closed than close-mids although that's the vowels I actually use in French and process as close-mids in the latter case. To answer your question: the true mids in Spanish are processed as close-mids by francophones (I'm confident that it is not only my case).
The closed mids in French and Italian are percieved as mids in Romanian (which only uses mids in the academic standard). Mid and closed mid are perceptuallu close.
This is an interesting comment because I speak Caribbean Spanish and learned French to an advanced level. For me, /e/ and /o/ are often much closer to [ɛ] and [ɔ], I can definitely tell the difference in other dialects and when speaking French, I usually have to raise to get French /e/ and /o/. And French /ɛ/ is almost identical to my native Spanish /e/, for /ɔ/, though, I actually find it's usually closer to something like [ʌ], with some unrounding.
I’m very grateful! Well, I can only justify making more videos like this if it gets more views. So please help if you can by sharing the video with as many people as possible. Thanks!
I found out about IPA some time ago and it really helped me. I mostly used wikipedia to learn about similar sounds and it really improved my English pronunciation. I'm glad though, that I found this video which combines everything I need to know about IPA.
I'm Hungarian, not Italian, but we also have both ɛ and e (e and é) in my language and I usually hear it as an ɛ. It tends to not be an issue tho, because I can replicate it pretty convincigly, even without really hearing the difference.
These are the same symbols used in speaking lessons and singing lessons. My speech and singing coaches had me and other students work with this. 1 of the most useful videos you released, Luke 👏
Yes, I like it. 👍 I also watch your other channel in order to build upon the Latin I learned from Catholic Mass attendance, theology courses and Latin a professor from a major university taught me. As a singer/musician IPA helps me sing in Latin, Spanish, Tagalog (which is a new language I am learning), German + French as well as in English.
Great video, thank you so much for explaining this phenomenal model. Making all these voulwels distinct in your mind will allow one to understand more of human communication and become better communicator themselves. I myself will look further into this and establish a practice. Thank you once more for shining some light onto the matter. 😁
my variant of Brazilian Portuguese has Italian-like vowels (both open and close, and to my ear closer phonemically to Italian than to European Portuguese, even), and I hear Spanish vowels as closed vowels in general.
Wow, this is incredibly useful, thank you! I now realise should've found and watched a lecture about IPA vowels a long time ago, really helps to have it all systematised like that.
Great that IPA is getting some love. If you haven't already, get familiar with spectrograms. You can actually use spectrograms to master vowel pronunciation using software like Praat. Simply upload a recording of a native speaker, then of yourself saying the exact same thing, compare the spectrograms, check the formants, see whether you need to move your tongue up/down/back/forward to match the formants of the native speaker, repeat until you nail it. If you want to know more, there are a few books on this topic, one example would be "Investigating Spoken English - A Practical Guide to Phonetics and Phonology Using Praat" by Stefan Benus.
Thanks very much for this video. I've been learning languages but really only had a muddled understanding of IPA and have just been muddling through vowel pronunciation. Watching your vid has made things a lot clearer in a way that just reading wiki pages or other sources probably wouldn't have (and I never had the motivation to read up on them until just now.)
The notion of an unrounded version of [u] has been completely alien to me until now, thanks for teaching us about it! The funny thing is, I started learning Japanese nearly a year ago and have been using [ɯ] for /う/ this whole time without realising it. I guess my ears are ahead of my brain.
I've been pronouncing the vowels along the whole video, must have looked hilarious from outside. I'm a native French and Spanish speaker and seeing the different vowels pinned down like this is exhilarating; usually they come out naturally without thinking about it, and it's really fun to consciously articulate the sounds. Amazing video, as always.
I just watched this video today, and it's a very nice explanation of the articulation of vowels using modern phonetic theory! Quite thorough overview for beginners imho! I'm a phonetician by training and profession, with a particular focus on tongue articulation, and I'd like to point out that rounded vowels tend to appear farther back and higher in the vowel space than their unrounded counterparts because vowel charts are often based on acoustic measurements (resonant formants F1 vs. F2) rather than articulatory ones. This is because the rounding of the lips tends to depress F1 (vowel appears higher) and depress F2 (vowel appears farther back). The acoustic explanation for this is that rounded lips are also protruded lips, and this lip protrusion lengthens the vowel tract a slight bit, which in turn decreases the frequency of all resonant formants of a vowel. So F1, F2, F3, etc. are all lower when the lips are rounded. Even vowels that are articulated with the same exact position of the tongue dorsum but with different lip rounding will have different values for F1 (vowel height) and F2 (frontness-backness). So, for the German vowel chart, you would expect [y], [ø], and [[œ] to appear more centralized than [i], [e], and [ɛ] simply due to lip rounding and not because of any shift in the position of the tongue. You also would expect the same effect in the back of the vowel space with [u], [o], [ɔ], and [ɒ] versus [ɯ], [ɤ], [ʌ], and [ɑ], with the former vowels appearing farther back and higher in the acoustic vowel space than the latter vowels. Of course, these patterns are only general tendencies that demonstrate the relationship between articulation and acoustics, and it is certainly possible that rounded vowels and their unrounded counterparts have significantly different tongue articulations (I believe this could be the case for vowels in Korean).
What an istructive video; and it was even accompanied by the best advertising I have seen in a long while, I reckon. Thank you very much for the great guide.
As a Japanese who is learning English accents（American and British accents ）this video was really helpful to understand the phonetic chart! Also in this video, you said 空気（which means air in Japanese ）and how you pronounced it was so perfect like a native speaker（your pronunciation and also pitch accent ）so I’m kinda shocked!lol i admire you cause you can speak many languages!
Great video :) I love IPA, English-Hungarian dictionaries tend to use some sort of IPA in them and back in the day we had to learn them when we started with the language in school so I've been comfortable with it for a long time... and then it's always a pain when people try to explain pronunciations using English spelling :D (Not least because English vowel values are a complete mess to begin with, but the dialectal differences are also huge) Webster's "pronunciation guides" drive me up the wall.
Hi. I’m not sure what you mean. Phonetically French /y/ is indeed /y/; but in Swedish it’s not always the same phonetically as the French equivalent en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology
8:00 /ɑ/ is never transcribed as central, but the phonetic realization is more central in General American English than the conventional IPA indicates 18:30 same with /ʌ/, it's more like [ɐ]
I'm learning French after a lot of time with Spanish, and have had a hunch that it is a more vowel heavy language. But I had no idea, honestly, just seeing this video pull up its vowel chart after the simple 5 point ones made me laugh out loud. It makes sense why I find comprehending spoken French so challenging. I'm not used to distinguish between some of the closer neighbour sounds that they use. It also makes sense why it sometimes feels like things go too quickly. It's as if they're doing arithmetic in base 10 while I'm used to base 5.
@@polyMATHY_Luke It is, brother, BTW I've been studying with the Athenaze as per your recommendation, and it has been a fun way to learn both Greek and Italian.
@@polyMATHY_Luke I loved your video! When you pronounce these sounds you make it look easy. They way vowels are produced blows my mind. The easiest thing to understand for me is roundness, becasue it is what I can see feel and see I think. Do you have a similar video about consonant sounds? If not do you have any plans? Cheers, have a nice weekend.
Thanks for the video! It cleared up a lot! Could you make another video about tounge root position and semi-vowels and such additional things? Personally I have a good grip on consonant IPA because I’ve had too use it so much when studying languages, but I struggle much more to identify different features of vowels since I haven’t needed to increase my vowel inventory too much, being swedish and studying arabic, finnish, mandarin and some more
Great video! I'd love to know what you about this extended version of the IPA by the Italian linguist Canepari. I know it can look pretty out there, but I kind of dig its precision and not having to rely on diacritics. It's kinda of neat to have a standalone symbol for the true-mid e̞ and o̞, since they're super common sounds in world languages. Only problem is, nobody uses it except for him 😅 it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CanIPA_Vocoids.svg
Grazie! I really like Canepari’s work! as you know. More detail can be quite useful; even for people who know IPA, confusion happens since it’s not precise enough even for 5-vowel systems. So in general this would seem to help pin down the difference between Spanish and Greek just for starters.
@@gwho yeah I really do think we need to make a Korean-like IPA2 where the shape of the symbol, given a few initial rules, gives a good amount of information about how it needs to be realised
Maybe there will be a future video about that too, but for those who are interested, Wikipedia has a very good IPA pulmonic consonant chart with audio. Pulmonic consonants include almost all consonants, except clicks, implosives and ejectives.
Thanks for the video Lucius! I just realized that the word "me" in the British pronunciation isn't far off the Swedish counterpart "mig", or as we also write, and actually pronounce it, "mej". (pronounced sort of like if you would pronounce "may" in English, maybe a bit more like "mey" where I'm from.
This is amazing, thank you for the thorough explanation. Language courses often don't even tell students about the IPA system, and in the beginning I kind of get it as it can be a little overwhelming, but it is extremely important in the study of any language. It is the real deal if the person wants to truly master a language with a top notch pronunciation, almost native-like. I will revisit this pretty often from now on, it's so useful, even more so for people who like do study a lot of languages like me, who aims to become a polyglot in the future. Again, outstanding job!! Cheers from Brazil.
Regarding your questions for italians. I am french and I lived 6 years in Italy and 1 year in Spain. The open/close dimension is a typical difference that italians point at when they want to describe the difference in accents between the north and the south. So I think you should also ask italians to mention where they are from, as northern italians might hear something different than southern ones. In my french ears, the "e" vowel in "alteza" as pronounced in spanish clearly sounds mora like the french "é" (almost the same sound to be honest). However, the "e" vowel in "fé" as pronounced in spanish (in the excerpt) seems like a sound that we don't have in french (I would say neither in italian). I also have this impression with spanish words that end in "ed", like "red" or "usted". The "e" vowel in "perder" also sounds much more like the french "è"... So it almost feels to me that they do indeed have three different "e" sounds in spanish, but maybe that's just my french ears speaking. The "o" of "todo" is also a sound that we don't have neither in french nor in italian. I have always thought that there was something funny about the spanish "o", but I never quite figured out what it was. Thanks to your video, now I know.
You are right about the variation across Italian regions. In Piemonte people tend to merge e/ɛ into e̞ and o/ɔ into o̞, whereas in Sicilia they tend to use only the open-mids ɛ, ɔ. Have a look at this section: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_phonology#Vowels
Not an Italian, but a Brazilian here instead. I listen it as closed vowels both in alteza and perdón. We also have both open and closed mid wovels in portuguese.
Just one thing: in standard Italian "amare" is often pronounced as /ama:re/ (with a slightly long a). The toned vowel is most of the time stretched unless it's followed by a geminated consonant. This phenomenon also happens when we pronounce foreign words: "computer" becomes /kompju:ter/
This really helps me understand what the symbols sound like and how they contrast. Written explanations leave me scratching my head, "What does 'œ' or 'Y' sound like?" The Wikipedia samples don't help much because each sound is isolated and many are on different pages and by the time you click on one you've forgotten another. I want to hear how one transitions to another and how it sounds in words, which you do in this video. I still find 'a', 'ä', and 'ɑ' sound the same to me.
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Hope they add Danish soon, this looks so much better than my current strategy of flipping between different sets of subtitles on Netflix!
Honestly, lingopie seems to be exactly what I have been looking for for years !
But... It's free at first, but then how much is it ?
Oh man. This is great. But I just realized that I'll have to return to the IPA only AFTER I finish learning Cyrillic. Some letters are very similar and that's just going to get confusing
@@justin.booth. but Danish phonetics are so peculiar. I'm surprised they can be spelt at all, regardless of the writing system. Lol. ;)
❤❤nations quw zoe
Uhsua
Usbbe
Uywc ziap s
😊
This is the kind of material one has to return to multiple times.
I hope it will serve
Especially when you're learning new languages or accents.
Indeed! We didn’t cover IPA during our linguistics classes, which made me a bit upset, but this video can help me fill that gap
@@polyMATHY_Luke the segmentation into chapters is perfection
@@nhkvictim5714 what kind of linguistics class doesn't cover the IPA???
A free lesson in phonology by the best American Latinist on UA-cam? Count me in.
Very kind!
Something I"ve learnt while conlanging: Vowels don't like being close to each other, so they'll usually have a relative equal distance between each other. You're probably not going to have a language with /ɑ æ a ä ɐ/ and /i/. It's good to keep in mind, because it also helps pronouncing things as well, since things are relatively distant.
And the arab language knows that
Have you ever seen ✨danish✨?
Search for Danish phonology on Wikipedia for a fun chart to look at
@@XGD5layerit has way too many vowels and they have to squish close together
Me, a portuguese speaker: "These vowels are not nasalized enough!"
Haha. Portuguese is wonderful
Do I know the IPA completely? yes. Am I going to watch this video anyway? *yes*
I’m delighted. Thanks.
I couldn’t express how much I appreciate this video, because of the distinguished connection between English language and/ to Italian. My native language is Romanian. For me it’s easier to learn Latin languages than English.
Thank you 🙏 so much!
Amazing video!
One little comment though:
- There are multiple types of rounding: protruded and compressed. Rounded back vowels are usually protruded (a notable exception is the Japanese /u/, which is compressed). Rounded front vowels are typically compressed (a notable exception is /y/ in Swedish though, which is protruded).
- Back unrounded vowels and front rounded vowels tend to be at least somewhat centralized, that is to say, pure back unrounded vowels and pure front rounded vowels are rare.
Thanks. Yes, this video just scratches the surface
Yes and Swedish round compressed vowels for most varieties tend to be overounded almost as if you are ready to whistle, it can even lead to a slight frictation.
/y/ in French may be compressed in the standard variety, but /y/ in gallo-italic dialects, which has a similar enough distribution, is generally protruded, and the tongue is slightly lower than in French (this is generally also true for /i/)
This is something I’ve never heard about. Thanks for the info.
Because of this video, I went online to check the different IP charts for Standard German from Germany (Bundesdeutsch) and Swiss German dialects (specifically the one from Zurich and Bern). The differences are shown so strongly through those charts. It is so fascinating!
Thank you for that!
I'm generally really bad at reading vowels in IPA and at hearing the smaller differences between them. This video really helped clear a lot of it up. Thank you
When my linguistics professor showed me this and then how to pronounce the French “u” , it blew my mind and hooked me on linguistics forever
That’s awesome
As an Italian who spoke Spanish as a foreign language, when I say vowels in Spanish I use the same vowel I would use in Italian, if the word is a cognate of the 2 languages, like perdono->perdon. Now that you pointed out that Italian has 7 vowels and Spanish only 5, (I never realized that)I will pay more attention when I speak. Great lesson, as usual. Thank you
Spanish may only have 5 vowel phonemes, but many varieties have positional allophones (at least the mid and low vowels), based on following consonants, preceding or following semivowels,,whether the syllable is open or not, etc. In Andalusian Spanish, where coda s is either lenited to h (before a consonant) or deleted (at the end of the phrase), mid-low varients of e and o have basically become phonemic.
So it's more tricky than that, and you might want to look into phonetic realisations of specific dialects.
Affascinante, grazie
@@pawel198812I've noticed /e/ in close syllables tends to sounds pretty similar to Italian close mid [e], for instance, like in the word "dedo". At least for most speakers
@@PodcastItaliano From what I've noticed, in Peninsular Spanish, e and o are higher in open syllables and in syllables with coda s or n, and they are lower when part of a diphthong or triphtong and in closed syllables (except before s or n). I don't know whether they approach the cardinal positions of high-mid and low-mid, though. The 'a' is central most of the time, but can be slightly farther back before x, l, rr, or u (not exactly like ɑ, but noticeably different). I'm bound to have missed at least some things. PersonalLyn, I find distinguishing consonants much easier
Sicilian Italian and I beleve other southern variations of Italian have a 5-vowel system. I wrote a comment about it, maybe you are interested!
Luke, it's the second week of university classes here in Tokyo and literally a few hours ago I was teaching the IPA to freshmen in my class on writing systems -- I'd love to show them this video! When we went over vowels, my New York-born self was very careful to make "standard" [ɑ:] and [ɔ:] sounds, though I told them they were free to imitate me next time I said [ɔə] or [ʊə] as we cultured Northeasterners like to do :)
Wow that’s amazing! Sugoi ne. I miss Tokyo. Thanks, please feel free to use this!
Thank you! IPA symbol for *ä* is central vowel, but the letter *ä* used in the ortography for example in Finnish and Estonian represents front vowel *æ* , like in the Finnish word *päättää* 'to decide'. Dots above letter show that it is front vowel, and this convention comes from Swedish and German.
Yeah. The fact that usually the two dots represent fronting, but in IPA they represent centralizing, is quite confusing. Some people use a for the central vowel and æ for the front open vowel to protest this.
@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm Yes, I understand it, at least for us who use the letter ä in writing of our native language, that convention feels "unnatural". 🙂 For example Finno-Ugric linguists use their own transcription system alongside IPA.
@@mmmmmmmmmmmmm also, æ/a/Œ is the only rounding series to have three characters with the "default" being the half-rounded version that normally is indicated through diacritics
In German it's all the way to /ɛ/, isn't it?
@@bacicinvatteneaca Yes, I think so. I probably would substitute it with *ä* while speaking German.
When that area of vowel diagram is not crowded in Finnish, pronouncing vowel "low enough" is sufficient for it to be regognized as vowel phoneme *ä* , not *e* (we have minimal pairs like *pesen* 'I wash' vs. *pesän* 'nest's (genitive)', but nothing in between). Same with consonants like *s* , even if I would pronounce it voiced or more hissing than typical, it would still be recognized as *s* , because we have only one phonemic sibilant.
Super helpful. Thanks Luke. Add this to "Things they should teach in school, but rarely do".
I love these deep dives into phonology, especially in ways that are accessible to people who aren't already familiar with the inner workings of linguistics! I could (and do) spend hours researching the precise realizations of phonemes, but it can be really difficult to explain phonology to the layman. Materials like this are amazing
Thanks! Well, I hope I’ve also adequately conveyed that I may not be hitting these vowels precisely but right, since they defy precise realization almost by definition haha. So it is pretty hard. And then trying to understand ancient phonology accurately?! Haha! Lots of challenges. But it is fun
@@polyMATHY_Luke and then of course, having to deal with people who have misunderstandings of how language works because of either ethnic nationalism or simple ignorance is always a strange mixture of entertaining and exhausting
der Lingwist?
@@SchmulKrieger yes
I love the IPA alphabet and use it frequently for my job since I'm a news presenter. Unfortunately, even not all of my colleagues have the knowledge to use it. And you even use the different signs [r], [ɾ], [ʀ] and [ʁ] for the different r-sounds. Who else does this? I'm so excited! I really enjoyed your video once again 🤗
A very useful video! For me, being Greek, I can only really "feel" five vowels natively, I can only learn the rest through lots and lots of listening.
Right! Yes, it’s an interesting struggle from the opposite angle for anglophones.
In Spanish, we tend to have the same problem!
27:32 you might've thought about the Ukrainian "син". The Russian cognate is "сын", and "ы" is realized more to the back. "Син" is not really a word in Russian, but if read aloud, "и" would be very fronted.
Yes, I confused the Ukrainian word here
it's between i and y and more centered I would say. As in earlier High German ü and i was interchangablely used as some wrote Hülfe and some Hilfe. this vowel sound got lost in German and is replaced by lax i.
He is technically correct as сын is supposedly "[sɨn]" in standard Russian according to IPA. However, as someone who has studied Russian and has Russian relatives, the IPA for "ы" as /ɨ/ doesn't sound right at all, and that vowel also appears to be realized more back and is different when stressed or unstressed.
@@Kyle-uo5bg It's also coloured differently when between before a palatalised or unpalatalised consonant.
Син ,yu min CYN-MYKX.
Awesome timing, Luke! I've been wanting to learn about IPA for a few months now with the goal of improving my Latin pronunciation. And what would you know, my favourite language channel releases a 40 minute video about it on the same day as my 30th birthday! Gratias, Magister!
I’m delighted! Thanks. Please share it with others who might find it useful
Lets put it like this: Most You Tube channels dealing with the IPA are Chevrolet cars; this is a Ferrari. Superbly explained like in no other place.
My rather amateur productions are not worthy of such a glowing comparison, but I thank you
You are like the only person that takes (Modern) Greek seriously as a language :) Thanks so much
Μάλιστα! Do people not take it seriously? It’s an important language in the EU, of two counties if I’m not mistaken
i love how modern greek sounds is so beautiful especially words with the back pronunciation γ
@@miewwcubing2570 oh hi
Native Italian speaker here, replying to your request on how I perceive the vowel in alteza. Let me give you a bit of context, which you may find interesting. I grew up in the '80s and '90s, and there where already many football players coming from Spanish speaking countries, who would then give interviews in Italian. So I got used to their accent. The vowels (particularly the e and the o) did sound different, though I never quite understood how. I would have described them as "faster" or "silkier" (piu' vellutate) or "neutral". Among friends we would imitate their accent, so I am not an isolated case. Therefore, hearing "alteza", I hear the different spanish sounding vowels. And now, when I imitate what I understood of the spanish accent, I do notice that I don't make an open e/o or a closed e/o, but something in the middle. I can try and put the Italian 'e's, and they both sound wrong. So you video has been very illuminating!!! 😀
I also believe that it was easier for me to pick up the spanish vowels because I heard spanish people speaking in Italian (as opposed to just hearing spanish). As you know, people from different regions pronounce the vowels differently already, so picking up a regional accent is mostly changing the vowels (though some of the consonants change as well...). So I learned those sounds essentially as regional variations of Italian. I actually wonder whether that could be a teaching technique: instead of learning new sounds in a new language, you first learn new sounds in a familiar language. Makes sense!
You also greatly confused me with the pronunciation of "perche' ". I always thought that the first e is closed and the second open. In fact, if I say the word by itself it comes out like that. I'd think it's because I am from the north, but many example pronunciations on the web also sound like that. However, I am noticing that if I use it in sentences, the finale 'e' changes: sometimes open and sometimes closed, probably depending on the intonation/stress and what comes after. Interesting!
Ciao Gabriele, thanks for the comment. Yes, I suppose my question ought to have been directed to Italian speakers who use the native sound system of Lazio or Tuscany, which is mostly or entirely the same as standard Italian. Many Italians like yourself don’t use the standard Italian vowel system - there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, it just shows I should have been more careful in my question in the video.
In standard Italian, “perché” has both vowels as closed. The opening of either vowel is indicative of a non-standard variant. Whenever we have é or ó in standard orthography, this means a closed vowel, while è and ò mean an open vowel.
30:02 As an Italian, i’ve always thought that the Spanish e sounded a lot like my close-mid. Now that I’ve found out it’s a true-mid though, i can also perceive it as an open-mid if i focus!
What you said about “perdón” applies to me. There really are some words where i would naturally perceive an open-mid instead of a close-mid due to similarities between the languages.
As a native Portuguese speaker, I have a similar experience. I generally interpret the Spanish e and o sounds as close-mid. I tend to hear an open-mid in certain when the Portuguese cognate has open-mid quality: cielo/céu, hierro/ferro etc. Not always, though..
How did you hear "alteza"? The first time, I heard it as close mid, but all the times after that, having heard what the prof. said about it, I hear it as open mid! (ps my Italian is a sort of "napoletano pulito", where the open mid is less open than in Tuscan.)
I thought Italian has 5 vowels. Does it really have 6?
@@WhizzKid2012 It has 5 vowels in written text: a, e, i, o, u. These become *7* when accounting for sound: a, close e, open e, i, close o, open o, u!
Your channel is amazing. Cheers from Brazil.
Thanks! Help this video by sharing it with the right people
IPA tutorial. 40-minutes. Great work! Maxima opera omnium tuarum, Luci! Now I have to find time to watch it whole :D
Thanks! Yeah it’ll help the video if you keep coming back to watch parts of it at a time
As someone who can pronounce both the “American” [æ] and the “British” [æ] the mention of this made me very glad
I’m delighted
One of the best modern linguists! Always love your videos
Never thought I could enjoy a chart as much as I did here. I'm no longer chartphobic!
Luke has the ability to make any subject that may at first seem abstruse for most of us really interesting and crystal clear. Phonetics or Life on Mars, whatever; it becomes so fascinating that it cheers me up.
That’s really kind of you to say
The greatest 41 minutes of language education. A game changer!
Dzięki!
Once i learned about IPA i started spelling everything with it. My family’s names, cities.
Nice way to practice
5:00 Absolutely phantastic and without watching the rest of the video, which I will do after writing this: I (German, where the high front round sound y is pretty common, written as ü) once was working in Saudi Arabia on a construction site for a few weeks. There were a dozen guys from India and one local working with me and one day the Arab told me in front nof the Indians, that he intended to visit Munshen pretty soon. It took me quite some time to realize, he was talking about München. Munich.
I told him, how to pronounce it correctly, he did not manage to say ü. I told him exactly what you explain here. Say i, then keep everything inside your mouth as it is, do not move it a millimeter, but pull your lips together as if you wanted to say o and you will automatically say ü. Did not work. Then I told him, say o and while doing so rise your tongue and again you will come to the ü. Also did not work.
An hour later I walked past the Indian guys, who were squatted down in their comfort position (it is beyond me, my knees would explode after a minute) and I heard them make this i-ü-o-ü excercise. They actually thought that was pretty amusing and they wanted to show off in front of the local by being able to do it. Pretty soon I had a handful of highly capable ü-speakers.
What a wonderful anecdote! Thanks for sharing that. Yes, it doesn’t come naturally to us, but it’s not hard to acquire with some practice.
In Tamil, the upside-down m sound (high back unrounded) is an allophone of /u/ used word-finally, so anything ending with a short /u/ sound, like தூங்கு (verb meaning sleep) ends with that sound
5:41 /y/ is also available in Tamil. It's called குற்றியலிகரம்(kutriyalikaram. Literally, shortened i) as in நாடியாது (நாடு+யாது).
6:30 /ɯ/ is called குற்றியலுகரம்(kutriyalukaram. Literally, Shortened u).
I'm a native French speaker, and in my regional accent, [e] and [ɛ] are on the verge of complete fusion into [e̞]. I can still make the difference between the two quite easily but I noticed that in my day to day speech, they are almost the same sounds. I found those phenomenons very fascinating. I'd be interested to know if the opposite case (where one vowel is splitting into two different ones) can be witnessed !
Très intéressant ! Merci
In a dialect of my native tongue, /ɛ/ is (apparently, according to Wikipedia) splitting into /e/ and /ɛ/ in some cases - it does not happen in the standard dialect, which I speak, but I was very surprised to realize that the difference in meaning it causes is discernible to me regardless.
@@inconspicuous-nobodyWhat's your native tongue?
@@poycixyz4614 Hungarian
@@inconspicuous-nobody Várj, komolyan? Az e és az é nem teljesen különálló hangok már eleve?
This video is so good! I’ve been longing for an IPA walkthrough ever since I started following your videos! Not taking linguistics in college has become a serious regret of mine 😭
Thanks so much! If able, please share it widely; if it doesn’t get too many views I’ll think twice about covering this topic here, and just limit it to patrons
@@polyMATHY_Luke Will do! Thanks again for the awesome content!
Yolo! A huge thanks to you!!!
I'm a Brazilian-Port. teacher and often times, when teaching our vowels to a SL student, I have some issues trying to help them out with a more accurate pronunciation. Your video is not only very educative, but also extremely detailed and scientific. It is of great help and I'll certainly start mentioning it to my students and other language enthusiasts ;)
One describtion I saw of the great vovel shift in English showed the vovels pushing each other around on the chart.
Quite a funny picture.
That's true, and I mentioned that a bit in the video. If mergers don't happen during movement, then you get multiple movements.
If there are any other Sicilians watching: the Italian we speak has a five-vowel system, which means we only have [ä], [ɛ], [i], [ɔ] and [u]. We don't use [e] and [o] (phonemically at least). I don't exactly know about other southern variants, but I believe this vowel system extends beyond Sicily and is shared by a big portion of southern native Italian speakers.
No dude, Sicilian has 7 vowels too: ä, e̞, ɪ, i, ɔ, ʊ and u; ɛ is an allophone. I don't know why there's this misconception about our vowel system
@@bastianodimebag I said Italian spoken in Sicily, not Sicilian
@@giuliocusenza5204 I am quite sure I read that you wrote another thing
@@bastianodimebag "the Italian we [Sicilians] speak". Where have I said Sicilian?
@@giuliocusenza5204 you modified the text tho
Thank you. You just reminded me of my favourite activity i.e. practicing every vowel sound on the IPA chart. My procrastination is grateful.
Τέλειο!! Ήταν μπελάς να τα μάθω όλα αυτά! Έβλεπα τις ορολογίες και ΕΦΡΙΖΑ (φρικαρα)!!! 😂
Αλλά με βοηθήσατε παρά πολύ που εξηγήσατε τόσο απλά τι σημαίνει η κάθε λέξη (πχ αυτό με το roundness, frontness, etc)!❤️
Είμαι πολύ χαρούμενος! Ευχαριστώ.
I know it's a sponsorship, but thanks for recommending Lingopie. It looks awesome. Also, this video is exactly what I needed.
Wow. You never cease to amaze me, Luke. I watched every second of this video 🐝.
I find phonology to be so interesting. Having Raph as my Latin teacher means I get to learn from the master!
I find it interesting how Portuguese also has a distinction between closed /e/ and open /ɛ/, but both vowels are phonemically/theoretically more open. So what I tend to do is "relax" the vowels a bit more.
I really hope you'll make a video about consonants. Grātiās summās tibi referō, Luciī!
This is fascinating! My native language is French, therefore I use both e and ɛ and both o and ɔ, and I learnt Spanish to an advanced level. I've always processed and heard those sounds as close-mids in Spanish, even though I pronounce them correctly as true mids in Spanish, but now that I think about it more carefully, I notice a clear distinction! By the way, some Latin American varieties of Spanish do use close-mids, and I find it strange: it's as if those sounds were more closed than close-mids although that's the vowels I actually use in French and process as close-mids in the latter case. To answer your question: the true mids in Spanish are processed as close-mids by francophones (I'm confident that it is not only my case).
Very interesting! I appreciate the feedback. Yes, it’s really neat.
The closed mids in French and Italian are percieved as mids in Romanian (which only uses mids in the academic standard). Mid and closed mid are perceptuallu close.
This is an interesting comment because I speak Caribbean Spanish and learned French to an advanced level. For me, /e/ and /o/ are often much closer to [ɛ] and [ɔ], I can definitely tell the difference in other dialects and when speaking French, I usually have to raise to get French /e/ and /o/. And French /ɛ/ is almost identical to my native Spanish /e/, for /ɔ/, though, I actually find it's usually closer to something like [ʌ], with some unrounding.
This is just incredible how useful you video is, Luke! Thank you so much! Please make something similar but with the consonants 🙏🏻
I’m very grateful! Well, I can only justify making more videos like this if it gets more views. So please help if you can by sharing the video with as many people as possible. Thanks!
I found out about IPA some time ago and it really helped me. I mostly used wikipedia to learn about similar sounds and it really improved my English pronunciation. I'm glad though, that I found this video which combines everything I need to know about IPA.
I'm Hungarian, not Italian, but we also have both ɛ and e (e and é) in my language and I usually hear it as an ɛ.
It tends to not be an issue tho, because I can replicate it pretty convincigly, even without really hearing the difference.
Excellent explanation.
Thanks for the hard work!
Luke, you're so good at teaching phonetics! Thanks for enlightening people about phonologies and peculiar sounds!
You’re very kind. Thanks for watching
These are the same symbols used in speaking lessons and singing lessons.
My speech and singing coaches had me and other students work with this.
1 of the most useful videos you released, Luke 👏
Thanks! I’m glad you liked it
Yes, I like it. 👍
I also watch your other channel in order to build upon the Latin I learned from Catholic Mass attendance, theology courses and Latin a professor from a major university taught me.
As a singer/musician IPA helps me sing in Latin, Spanish, Tagalog (which is a new language I am learning), German + French as well as in English.
Great video, thank you so much for explaining this phenomenal model. Making all these voulwels distinct in your mind will allow one to understand more of human communication and become better communicator themselves. I myself will look further into this and establish a practice. Thank you once more for shining some light onto the matter. 😁
This is the best and most thorough video I've found about this on UA-cam! You, sir, are awesome!
That’s very kind. I feel like I cut a few corners, but I’m glad if you found it helpful.
@@polyMATHY_Luke It's incredibly helpful! I loved it!
my variant of Brazilian Portuguese has Italian-like vowels (both open and close, and to my ear closer phonemically to Italian than to European Portuguese, even), and I hear Spanish vowels as closed vowels in general.
Wow, this is incredibly useful, thank you! I now realise should've found and watched a lecture about IPA vowels a long time ago, really helps to have it all systematised like that.
I’m glad you liked it!
Great that IPA is getting some love. If you haven't already, get familiar with spectrograms. You can actually use spectrograms to master vowel pronunciation using software like Praat. Simply upload a recording of a native speaker, then of yourself saying the exact same thing, compare the spectrograms, check the formants, see whether you need to move your tongue up/down/back/forward to match the formants of the native speaker, repeat until you nail it. If you want to know more, there are a few books on this topic, one example would be "Investigating Spoken English - A Practical Guide to Phonetics and Phonology Using Praat" by Stefan Benus.
This video is really well done and very useful! 👍 I will recommend it to my students! Thanks very much! 🙂
Thanks! I appreciate that
This was much needed. Thank you!
Thanks very much for this video. I've been learning languages but really only had a muddled understanding of IPA and have just been muddling through vowel pronunciation. Watching your vid has made things a lot clearer in a way that just reading wiki pages or other sources probably wouldn't have (and I never had the motivation to read up on them until just now.)
I’m really glad it helps!
Elegant explanation to cool vowel symbols in IPA. absolute legend.
One of your most useful vids so far. Would love to see more on IPA and phonology comparisons like this
Thanks. You’ll get it.
Wow, what a great video. Really loved it!
I’ve been wondering about that stuff since many years. Very useful.
Just wanted to learn more about vowels in the ipa and found this video. Very thankful.
The notion of an unrounded version of [u] has been completely alien to me until now, thanks for teaching us about it!
The funny thing is, I started learning Japanese nearly a year ago and have been using [ɯ] for /う/ this whole time without realising it. I guess my ears are ahead of my brain.
Nice! Yeah I didn’t realize either until recently.
I am from Turkey and we also use unrounded u. Its written as ı
@@saksagan1436 So that's what that letter is!
I've been pronouncing the vowels along the whole video, must have looked hilarious from outside.
I'm a native French and Spanish speaker and seeing the different vowels pinned down like this is exhilarating; usually they come out naturally without thinking about it, and it's really fun to consciously articulate the sounds.
Amazing video, as always.
I just watched this video today, and it's a very nice explanation of the articulation of vowels using modern phonetic theory! Quite thorough overview for beginners imho! I'm a phonetician by training and profession, with a particular focus on tongue articulation, and I'd like to point out that rounded vowels tend to appear farther back and higher in the vowel space than their unrounded counterparts because vowel charts are often based on acoustic measurements (resonant formants F1 vs. F2) rather than articulatory ones. This is because the rounding of the lips tends to depress F1 (vowel appears higher) and depress F2 (vowel appears farther back). The acoustic explanation for this is that rounded lips are also protruded lips, and this lip protrusion lengthens the vowel tract a slight bit, which in turn decreases the frequency of all resonant formants of a vowel. So F1, F2, F3, etc. are all lower when the lips are rounded. Even vowels that are articulated with the same exact position of the tongue dorsum but with different lip rounding will have different values for F1 (vowel height) and F2 (frontness-backness). So, for the German vowel chart, you would expect [y], [ø], and [[œ] to appear more centralized than [i], [e], and [ɛ] simply due to lip rounding and not because of any shift in the position of the tongue. You also would expect the same effect in the back of the vowel space with [u], [o], [ɔ], and [ɒ] versus [ɯ], [ɤ], [ʌ], and [ɑ], with the former vowels appearing farther back and higher in the acoustic vowel space than the latter vowels. Of course, these patterns are only general tendencies that demonstrate the relationship between articulation and acoustics, and it is certainly possible that rounded vowels and their unrounded counterparts have significantly different tongue articulations (I believe this could be the case for vowels in Korean).
What an istructive video; and it was even accompanied by the best advertising I have seen in a long while, I reckon. Thank you very much for the great guide.
Can you make more videos, like this on the IPA, I really want to learn and master it completely...
And Your Explanation is Wonderful!
As a Japanese who is learning English accents（American and British accents ）this video was really helpful to understand the phonetic chart!
Also in this video, you said 空気（which means air in Japanese ）and how you pronounced it was so perfect like a native speaker（your pronunciation and also pitch accent ）so I’m kinda shocked!lol
i admire you cause you can speak many languages!
Great video :) I love IPA, English-Hungarian dictionaries tend to use some sort of IPA in them and back in the day we had to learn them when we started with the language in school so I've been comfortable with it for a long time... and then it's always a pain when people try to explain pronunciations using English spelling :D (Not least because English vowel values are a complete mess to begin with, but the dialectal differences are also huge) Webster's "pronunciation guides" drive me up the wall.
Indeed! IPA is a critical first step.
Gracias por este material tan valioso!
Man, you do everything!
Thanks!
Finally someone pronouncing y properly!!!
It's a totally natural sound in Norway for example. And is the sound in HYGGE.
However, la lune is not lyn!
Hi. I’m not sure what you mean. Phonetically French /y/ is indeed /y/; but in Swedish it’s not always the same phonetically as the French equivalent
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology
@@polyMATHY_Luke I'm half Norwegian & half French. Lune, has never had the pointy y sound.
I will watch the whole video 100%
I wish I'd had this kind of explanation decades ago. Thank you very much, Luke!
Thanks for watching!
meloves some international phonetic ale
8:00 /ɑ/ is never transcribed as central, but the phonetic realization is more central in General American English than the conventional IPA indicates
18:30 same with /ʌ/, it's more like [ɐ]
I agree.
I'm learning French after a lot of time with Spanish, and have had a hunch that it is a more vowel heavy language. But I had no idea, honestly, just seeing this video pull up its vowel chart after the simple 5 point ones made me laugh out loud.
It makes sense why I find comprehending spoken French so challenging. I'm not used to distinguish between some of the closer neighbour sounds that they use. It also makes sense why it sometimes feels like things go too quickly. It's as if they're doing arithmetic in base 10 while I'm used to base 5.
The comprehensive guide we needed. You're such a Chad.
I’m glad if it’s of help
@@polyMATHY_Luke It is, brother, BTW I've been studying with the Athenaze as per your recommendation, and it has been a fun way to learn both Greek and Italian.
I always wanted to follow an ipa tutorial, you're just great dude
Thanks for watching, Yianni
You’re an amazing teacher! Thank you so much for this great lesson.
Thanks for watching!
An excellent podcast. Thank you.
I’m very pleased you liked it
I remember once explaining vowel chart to friend on a party. I was drunk and talking to Him about hour, or 2 xD.
Haha awesome. I’ve been there.
Very helpful as usual. Thanks!
Thanks for watching and sharing!
I've been waiting for this. Gräzie. Will you do a similar video with consonants? Not *all* of them but with the most important/interesting ones.
I will! I look forward to it.
I've just finished reading a wiki article about proto-slavic transcription, and wanted to look up IPA on UA-cam. Recomendations do their job right.
That’s awesome
@@polyMATHY_Luke I loved your video! When you pronounce these sounds you make it look easy. They way vowels are produced blows my mind. The easiest thing to understand for me is roundness, becasue it is what I can see feel and see I think. Do you have a similar video about consonant sounds? If not do you have any plans?
Cheers, have a nice weekend.
Thanks for the video! It cleared up a lot! Could you make another video about tounge root position and semi-vowels and such additional things?
Personally I have a good grip on consonant IPA because I’ve had too use it so much when studying languages, but I struggle much more to identify different features of vowels since I haven’t needed to increase my vowel inventory too much, being swedish and studying arabic, finnish, mandarin and some more
Very interesting! Thank you!
Great video! I'd love to know what you about this extended version of the IPA by the Italian linguist Canepari. I know it can look pretty out there, but I kind of dig its precision and not having to rely on diacritics. It's kinda of neat to have a standalone symbol for the true-mid e̞ and o̞, since they're super common sounds in world languages.
Only problem is, nobody uses it except for him 😅 it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CanIPA_Vocoids.svg
Grazie! I really like Canepari’s work! as you know. More detail can be quite useful; even for people who know IPA, confusion happens since it’s not precise enough even for 5-vowel systems. So in general this would seem to help pin down the difference between Spanish and Greek just for starters.
Super interessante ;)
@@gwho yeah I really do think we need to make a Korean-like IPA2 where the shape of the symbol, given a few initial rules, gives a good amount of information about how it needs to be realised
@@bacicinvatteneaca nice was about to said Korean hangeul
Maybe there will be a future video about that too, but for those who are interested, Wikipedia has a very good IPA pulmonic consonant chart with audio. Pulmonic consonants include almost all consonants, except clicks, implosives and ejectives.
21:40 omg, as a spanish native that "e" totally sounded like when we pronounce it. Subtle but great difference! Thanks for this, wonderful video 💯
¡Gracias!
Thanks for the video Lucius! I just realized that the word "me" in the British pronunciation isn't far off the Swedish counterpart "mig", or as we also write, and actually pronounce it, "mej". (pronounced sort of like if you would pronounce "may" in English, maybe a bit more like "mey" where I'm from.
This is amazing, thank you for the thorough explanation. Language courses often don't even tell students about the IPA system, and in the beginning I kind of get it as it can be a little overwhelming, but it is extremely important in the study of any language. It is the real deal if the person wants to truly master a language with a top notch pronunciation, almost native-like. I will revisit this pretty often from now on, it's so useful, even more so for people who like do study a lot of languages like me, who aims to become a polyglot in the future.
Again, outstanding job!! Cheers from Brazil.
Obrigado! I’m so glad you found it useful
thanks a lot for this. I *really* appreciate it!
thank you very much. Excellent
Regarding your questions for italians.
I am french and I lived 6 years in Italy and 1 year in Spain.
The open/close dimension is a typical difference that italians point at when they want to describe the difference in accents between the north and the south. So I think you should also ask italians to mention where they are from, as northern italians might hear something different than southern ones.
In my french ears, the "e" vowel in "alteza" as pronounced in spanish clearly sounds mora like the french "é" (almost the same sound to be honest).
However, the "e" vowel in "fé" as pronounced in spanish (in the excerpt) seems like a sound that we don't have in french (I would say neither in italian). I also have this impression with spanish words that end in "ed", like "red" or "usted".
The "e" vowel in "perder" also sounds much more like the french "è"... So it almost feels to me that they do indeed have three different "e" sounds in spanish, but maybe that's just my french ears speaking.
The "o" of "todo" is also a sound that we don't have neither in french nor in italian.
I have always thought that there was something funny about the spanish "o", but I never quite figured out what it was. Thanks to your video, now I know.
You are right about the variation across Italian regions. In Piemonte people tend to merge e/ɛ into e̞ and o/ɔ into o̞, whereas in Sicilia they tend to use only the open-mids ɛ, ɔ. Have a look at this section: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_phonology#Vowels
This is great! I ask, humbly, if your polymathy extends to music theory and if so would it be possible to see a video explaining the basics of it?
Not an Italian, but a Brazilian here instead. I listen it as closed vowels both in alteza and perdón. We also have both open and closed mid wovels in portuguese.
Thanks for the feedback!
I am surprised that Portuguese has only 9 vowels. I thought it had 20-30.
Just one thing: in standard Italian "amare" is often pronounced as /ama:re/ (with a slightly long a). The toned vowel is most of the time stretched unless it's followed by a geminated consonant. This phenomenon also happens when we pronounce foreign words: "computer" becomes /kompju:ter/
Right, a yet more narrow transcription would be [ämäːɾe]. The vowel length is not phonemic, so I personally wouldn’t add this feature in //
This really helps me understand what the symbols sound like and how they contrast. Written explanations leave me scratching my head, "What does 'œ' or 'Y' sound like?" The Wikipedia samples don't help much because each sound is isolated and many are on different pages and by the time you click on one you've forgotten another. I want to hear how one transitions to another and how it sounds in words, which you do in this video.
I still find 'a', 'ä', and 'ɑ' sound the same to me.