I am curious to know how many people use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for language learning. Is it useful? Is it worthwhile learning?
I have never learned it and prefer to focus on listening. What do others think?
I have no use for it when learning languages. All human beings acquire language through listening (of course) and can do so regardless of age, ethnic group or gender. The IPA works well for linguistics, and allows linguists to describe foreign phonologies with relative ease. Therein lies the true benefit of the international phonetic alphabet.
I imagine it also works well in environments such as classrooms, where repetitive listening isn’t as practical. But overall, it strikes as a way of trying to find a shortcut in learning pronunciation when it just seems to complicate matters: Students will have to hear the foreign sounds they’re having difficulty with in order to apply that sound to an IPA character. So why not just learn, through frequent reading and listening, where those sounds occur in relation to the writing system of the language? I don’t deny it can’t be helpful at all and I’m sure it is to a certain extent, but I would much prefer to just enjoy listening to and reading in the language and picking it all up in due time. It’s also more fun that way.
Maybe for languages where there is a shortage of resources this kind of phonetic alphabet could be more useful.
I believe that in English there are so many resources in the Internet that such an alphabet would be practically useless.
If I need to find out the pronunciation of a word I use this dictionary: http://www.m-w.com/, which audio files for most words. Or even some voice generator. Although the voices are frequently somewhat unpleasant, they have the advantage of creating audio files from any text.
I use it alot when I am translating libretto, or text into a song into English so that I can understand and interpret the poetry. IPA is terrific for learning proper pronunciation and for those of use with our ridiculous English dipthongs and tendency to swallow words into our throats, this is incredibly important.
I am still trying to memorize it and know it will be useful as I start to sing in more languages.
I use the pronunciation from dict.cc or Answers.com very often because there are very good and understandable voices.
This is important for me because I try to read outloud text without sound too.
The possibility in babylon isn’t so good.