Online Phonetics Course

Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland.
http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/phonetique/table-eng.html
http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/index.html

Authors' last updated: 13 January 1999. Translated from French by Daniel Ezra Johnson. Most figures on this page were adapted to English by Athanasius Lance Arron Hamilton. Please send any remarks or comments to Christophe.Pythoud@ling.unil.ch

Downloaded and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR. See reference materials used by UKT.
Top

UKT:
• The UNIL web-pages used glyphs (graphics in .gif format) to show the phonetic characters. This slows down the opening of the web-page. However I have used Arial Unicode MS exclusively. If the IPA character schwa [ ə ] appears on your computer with almost the same shape as , then be assured that most of the characters that is displayed on your computer screen is correct.
• I have also incorporated large sections from web-pages of Kevin Russell Linguistics Department, University of Manitoba (UMB), Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V5, CANADA http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/notes.htm
• The Burmese characters are gif-glyphs and you need not have any Burmese font.
• This paper is for those who can read and write Bur-Myan. Please see my message To Myanmars.

Contents

01. Introduction | Internet link: Introduction
0101. Sound Production
0102. Consonants and Vowels
0103. Place and Manner of Articulation
0104. Voice
0105. Nasality
Laterality
Airstream mechanism
Describing consonant segments

Writing things the way they sound
How not to do it
Why not
Overcoming the problems
Shorthand systems
Traditional dictionary keys
Informal transcription conventions
Specialized alphabets
02. International Phonetic Alphabet | Internet link: IPA
0201. Oral Consonants
0202. Nasal Consonants
English Consonants
0203. Vowels
English Vowels

03. Consonants | Internet link: Consonants
0301. Occlusives
030101. Oral Stops
030102. Nasals
0302. Fricatives
030202. True Fricatives
030202. Spirants
0303. Laterals
030301. Lateral Fricatives
030302. Non-Fricative Laterals
0304."Vibrant" Consonants
030401. Taps
030402. Trills

04. Vowels Internet link: Vowels
Vowel lip-postures
0401. Close Vowels
040101. Close Front Vowels - 2 characters
040102. Close Central Vowels - 2 characters
040103. Close Back Vowels - 2 characters
0402. Half-close Vowels
040201. Half-Close Front Vowels - 2 characters
040202. Half-Close Central Vowels - 1 character (schwa)
040203. Half-Close Back Vowels - 2 characters
0403. Half-Open Vowels
040301. Half-Open Front Vowels - 3 characters
040302. Half-Open Front Vowels - 1 character
040303. Half-Open Back Vowels - 2 characters
0404. Open Vowels
040401. Open Front Vowels - 1 character
040402. Open Central Vowels - No characters
040403. Open Back Vowels - 2 characters
0405. The notion semi-vowel
040501. Examples of Semi-Vowels - 5 characters

UNIL contents | Top

UKT notes

• The original web-pages used glyphs (graphics in .gif format) to show the phonetic characters. This slows down the opening of the web -page.

• My aim had been to substitute these glyphs with IPA fonts. There were at least two: IPAPhon and SILDulos IPA93. However, they were entirely different. My first attempt was to use SILDulos IPA93 to replace the glyphs. However, with the introduction of Unicode fonts, there is no longer the necessessity to have special fonts.

• Fonts that have been introduced lately are the Unicode fonts, the first of which is Arial Unicode MS. If your machine platform is Windows XP, it already has Unicode fonts installed and you'll be able to write web-pages with it. However, if your platform is Windows ME or Windows 98, you'll still be able to read the Unicode fonts but you'll not be able to input them directly into your web-pages. It is important that you can actually see the phonetic characters. For this, see how the phoneme /ə/ (U0259) appears. If the character between / / looks like the Burmese hka. kway: , then your machine can display Unicode correctly.

• Many online courses use machine-readable or ASCII characters which makes it necessary to include these characters in these pages. Refer to SAMPA (Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet) www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm. I've included an extract of the SAMPA index page from TIL database. However, it is regrettable that there are several machine readable (or ASCII) systems and you should clearly state which system you are using.

Top
End of TIL page