Homework discussion: the IPA

[Michelle Marlies Brinkmann]

Hey, I’m not too sure if this is the right way to do this. I found question two of this week’s homework (“What is special about the IPA?”) rather interesting.

Here is the response I came up with:
The IPA includes all sounds that can be produced by human speech organs and thus, as all languages are spoken, every word of every language can be transcribed into the IPA, despite the writing systems used by the world’s languages not being congruent with each other.

• This topic was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Michelle Marlies Brinkmann.
• This topic was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Kirsten Middeke.

[Jeremy Kolleß]

I used the spelling bee as an example for number 3, since the participants can sometimes only spell the words when it was spoken in a sentence.

Since some words in English are pronounced the same you need the word written out to know what it is exactly. It is comparable to Kanji in Japanese, however it is less distinguishable because the alphabets and grammar are vastly different.

[Kirsten Middeke]

The IPA can be used for any language, hat’s true. But you can probably find ways of representing any language in any writing system, can’t you? What else is special about the IPA?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Kirsten Middeke.

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