IPA

[Ftxavang Pamtseotu]

I have very little formal instruction/training with IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)... However, I do have a very basic understanding and grasp of it from when I took a few voice and diction courses in my undergraduate school days. Though it would be a great resource to have placed in a sticky at the top of this forum, (perhaps in the intermediate forum as well).

For purposes of working out proper pronunciations, as provided in our helpful dictionaries. You'll notice that in all dictionaries that they spell out the pronunciation in parentheses, which is provided in IPA format. Im positive most of you know this already. The general basics of IPA and the sounds it's characters represent is pretty much easy to get down. Which I believe will help any average joe in working on their pronunciation without needing to always be avalible online to ask someone in this community about their pronunciation, or without the need to consult a recording. Sometimes we find ourselves in a place where it isn't convenient to get online but we are in a place where we can study between appointments (via our lovely smart phone apps).

Im going to provide some links in here with some IPA resources. i.e charts of the characters, their sounds, etc etc. Its going to be very similar to the charts we have in the Na'vi in a Nutshell .pdf (actually its pretty much identical in concept).

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter2/amercons.html
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter2/amerenglishvowels.html
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter4/4vowels.html
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/chapter1.html

These two are my personal preferred... They're straight forward and to the point.
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm
http://www.eduquery.com/archives/ipa.htm

Hopefully this will be a bit helpful for individuals trying to work pronunciation out on their own. It also may help with one's understanind of some of the Na'vi charts we have been provided with.

IPA can also be used to laern how to speak with certain accents, if you want to have fun with it...   (as those of you actors outt here should know)

[abi]

Pronunciation:
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html

IPA character and combinations:
http://weston.ruter.net/projects/ipa-chart/view/keyboard/

[Tirea Aean]

IPA<3

Things get very ridiculous when people from different parts of the world use region specifc examples. not everyone says every word the same way. accents use totally different IPA to say the same word sometimes. its almost impossible to find something SUPER universal. there is almost always a bias. these IPA charts i find are either very british or very american. and the word examples(unless they have audio) are misleading. thats why Na'vi is so crazy hard to learn throught text and writing.

['Oma Tirea]

Sran, and one issue with Paul Meier's attempt at the IPA chart is that the voiceless plosives are aspirated in all demonstrated positions rather than unaspirated.... nì'Ìnglìsì

If you need some pronounciation tips for Na'vi, I'm here, as is the rest of the Na'vi-speaking community

[Ftxavang Pamtseotu]

IPA<3

Things get very ridiculous when people from different parts of the world use region specifc examples. not everyone says every word the same way. accents use totally different IPA to say the same word sometimes. its almost impossible to find something SUPER universal. there is almost always a bias. these IPA charts i find are either very british or very american. and the word examples(unless they have audio) are misleading. thats why Na'vi is so crazy hard to learn throught text and writing.

Not to stir the pot. But this is the exact thing that IPA is suppose to function for... Hence my confusion in regards as to why using a knowledge of IPA as provided in the dictionaries on learnnavi.org, to help with pronunciation not being universal. Im familiar with accent issues due to diphthongs, but if some one approaches it logically and with an awareness of the tendencies of one's accent based off country and region. Because this is going to be an issue for any language. Believe me, being from the back woods/more rural areas of East Tennessee and growing up in/around the Smokey Mountains its sometimes hard for some individuals to get away from their southern accents. Regardless of how thick or not it is. Just seems to me that learning some basic IPA and applying it to one's initial learning of Na'vi pronunciation, that it would be a good place to start.

I figured since this area was mainly compromised of English communication that posting up some English IPA sources would be appropriate.


As I said my knowledge of IPA is somewhat basic, but as I understand it, as I understand it it can be used with its subtleties it can be used extremely effectively.

Perhaps a conversion chart as to what IPA sounds/syllables line up and match the appropriate Na'vi sounds/syllables. Or maybe my understanding of Na'vi at this point just isn't indepth enough to be able to make this assumption. But from the reading and analyzing of charts, vocabulary, it just seems like IPA knowledge could be helpful for some people, though obviously not everyone. As a certified teacher, its my experience that any resource that can be made available for the numeyu to draw from that may assist in their learning.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

Would it be logical or correct to say that if you use the 'correct' pronunciation of each IPA character when applying it to a language, that you should be tolerably close to how it should sound? Close enough that a native speaker would likely understand you?

[Tirea Aean]

Would it be logical or correct to say that if you use the 'correct' pronunciation of each IPA character when applying it to a language, that you should be tolerably close to how it should sound? Close enough that a native speaker would likely understand you?

yeah. considering thats basically what happens.

[Kyle Kepone]

The thing that helped me the most was just to listen to how certain sounds (tx, px, kx, rr, ll, ì, ä, ng) were pronounced by the community, by Karyu Pawl and by actors in the movie. I sort of copied the accents of the speakers by ear, and that was a big help, mostly because I don't have an accent (yay being from California).

[Tirea Aean]

The thing that helped me the most was just to listen to how certain sounds (tx, px, kx, rr, ll, ì, ä, ng) were pronounced by the community, by Karyu Pawl and by actors in the movie. I sort of copied the accents of the speakers by ear, and that was a big help, mostly because I don't have an accent (yay being from California).

i dont care who you are, you have an accent. accents are completely relative. to anyone but an american from california, you do have an accent. to anyone not from baltimore, I have an accent. this fact leads to some interesting interpretations of phonetics.

The actors made such mistakes. i would MUCH rather learn from Pawl than them. of course the movie isnt ENTIRELY bad...

[Kyle Kepone]

OK, I see what you're saying. But still, listening to examples of people speaking Na'vi has helped me a lot.

[Tirea Aean]

OK, I see what you're saying. But still, listening to examples of people speaking Na'vi has helped me a lot.

oh for sure the more the better!

we have skype and teamspeak to talk to each other with voice. we also have that cool little project that Omängum Fra'uti et al have been working on. (the mightyverse one. and also that one peer reviewed audio list.) tho those are, relative to the latest dictionary, incomplete. but is enough to totally get the gist of Na'vi pronunciation.

but back to the topic of IPA, it is great to learn, not a disadvantage to NOT learn, but only an advantage to learn. the resources posted already are pretty nice and i say if you combine them with regular listening(and/or speaking) practice, you are well on your way.

[omängum fra'uti]

i dont care who you are, you have an accent. accents are completely relative. to anyone but an american from california, you do have an accent. to anyone not from baltimore, I have an accent. this fact leads to some interesting interpretations of phonetics.

The actors made such mistakes. i would MUCH rather learn from Pawl than them. of course the movie isnt ENTIRELY bad...

The California accent is, I believe, pretty close to what is considered a GA accent.  That said, Frommer is from California, so Na'vi already has a California accent bent to it, I'd imagine, hence being from California would potentially make it easier.

[Kyle Kepone]

(off topic: sorry!) What is this mightyverse project? I've been away.

[omängum fra'uti]

mightyverse.com

[Tirea Aean]

i dont care who you are, you have an accent. accents are completely relative. to anyone but an american from california, you do have an accent. to anyone not from baltimore, I have an accent. this fact leads to some interesting interpretations of phonetics.

The actors made such mistakes. i would MUCH rather learn from Pawl than them. of course the movie isnt ENTIRELY bad...

The California accent is, I believe, pretty close to what is considered a GA accent.  That said, Frommer is from California, so Na'vi already has a California accent bent to it, I'd imagine, hence being from California would potentially make it easier.

thats probably true. its a roughly true generalization that Americans have it made with this language. The Maryland accent is easy too... the only thing is, we only DON'T have the following sounds that Na'vi has: aw ew (english in general doesnt really have rr so i left that out)

['Oma Tirea]

i dont care who you are, you have an accent. accents are completely relative. to anyone but an american from california, you do have an accent. to anyone not from baltimore, I have an accent. this fact leads to some interesting interpretations of phonetics.

The actors made such mistakes. i would MUCH rather learn from Pawl than them. of course the movie isnt ENTIRELY bad...

The California accent is, I believe, pretty close to what is considered a GA accent.  That said, Frommer is from California, so Na'vi already has a California accent bent to it, I'd imagine, hence being from California would potentially make it easier.

thats probably true. its a roughly true generalization that Americans have it made with this language. The Maryland accent is easy too... the only thing is, we only DON'T have the following sounds that Na'vi has: aw ew (english in general doesnt really have rr so i left that out)

Some accents, especially those that don't have the hull-bull merger, unlike me, might also not have 'Ll.  'Rr is most certainly not English, although it occurs in a lot of Eastern European languages, and maybe even some dialects of German.  Also, what used to be the "ew" sound in English has shifted to "yu" and has been merely reduced to a fluctuating "ìw" sound, but you made the point clear enough.

Lastly, hate to reveal it, but I believe Frommer has had his fair share of minute pronounciation mistakes, too (e.g. {me̞.o.a.u.ni.a.e̞.a} instead of {mɛ.o.a.u.ni.a.ɛ.a}).

[kewnya txamew'itan]

'Rr is most certainly not English

Many Scots would disagree with you (even those who don't speak Scottish Gaelic).

Anyway, I agree with Tirea aean that, whilst useful to learn it is by no means necessary for learning the language (we have enough audio resources that people can hear the pronunciations themselves without needing to learn a new alphabet as well).

['Oma Tirea]

'Rr is most certainly not English

Many Scots would disagree with you (even those who don't speak Scottish Gaelic).

Syllabic, rolling RR in Scottish English?  Nìngay srak?

I thought in Scottish it was always {ɛr}, {ɪr}, or {ʌr} instead of {ɜr} or {r̩}.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

Not syllabic as far as I know, but the sound is the same. In general I find that most IPA diacritics should be ignored when discussing whether a language has a sound or not as most can be fairly easily applied without any knowledge of IPA or phonetics. I say most because aspiration can be difficult to learn as can nasalisation and ejectives (so basically the airstream ones); diacritics to do with length and syllabicity can generally be learnt quite easily as can those to do with stress and/or tones provided the learner has a language with a stress/tone system even if it uses fewer or different stresses/tones than the language being learnt.

[Ftxavang Pamtseotu]

ma Eywa! What have I started.