Re: Transcribing rhotics for ESL

From: Mxsmanic (mxsmanic_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/13/04 

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 04:48:45 +0200

Peter Dy writes:

> I still don't get it. What is wrong with a phonemic transcription?

Nothing, except that I still want to distinguish between the
pronunciations of certain phonemes when these are very different in two
languages. So I want to use different symbols for 'r' in English and
French to make clear that they are quite different sounds. And by using
the symbols that best represent the most common allophone for the
phoneme, I'm less likely to run into a problem if I teach English to
someone whose native language uses a conflictingly similar sound.

For example, if I just use 'r' for English 'r', that's fine until I
teach someone who speaks, say, Spanish, and whose "local" 'r' is
represented by that very symbol, even though the pronunciation of his
'r' is very different from that of English. So I prefer to represent
the English 'r' as, say, a retroflex, so that if the same symbol ever
happens to be used for a student's own language, at least it will
represent roughly the same actual sound.

Essentially I'm trying to treat multiple languages as a single
metalanguage, and grouping phonemes across them appropriately.

In my current chart I have 51 phonemes for French and English combined.
I teach students that some of these phonemes, like /k/ or /m/, sound
essentially the same in both languages, and so they need not bother
learning anything special for them (although I do explain any minor
differences in the most common allophones, such as the aspiration of /p/
or /b/). For other phonemes, such as /y/ or /I/, I teach that no
equivalents exist, and so the sounds must be carefully learned, and I
teach the most common allophones.

One of the things I'm trying to avoid is conflicts in IPA
representation. I've mentioned the problem with /e/, which French
students (correctly) learn to represent the vowel in blé, whereas
English transcribers often insist on using the same symbol to represent
the vowel in bed. The same problem arises with older transcriptions in
English that inexplicably distinguish between bin and bean using only
length markers after the vowel, despite the fact that these are two
different vowels, not the same vowel with different lengths. The bad
English transcriptions can be a source of frustration for students,
because they think that bin and bean rhyme, with the latter only having
a slightly longer vowel--because that's the way some idiot transcribed
it.

> In the IPA Handbook, the "r" in American English <were> is
> a schwa with a hook on the right, to denote rhoticity.

Where is this in the table? I've been using the symbol given for
alveolar approximant. Many texts use the one for alveolar trill,
probably because it doesn't require a special glyph (easy to typeset and
recognize). I also thought of the fishhook-like retroflex approximant,
which seems to be the way I'm pronouncing the sound myself. It can't be
a tap or flap (at least for me), because my tongue never touches
anything.

Hmm ... are you talking about the tilted schwa with the little rhoticity
mark attached? How does this differ from the inverted 'r' sound? When
I say <were> and <north>, I seem to be pronouncing the 'r' in exactly
the same way, so what's the distinction? How is <bird> transcribed?

I wish I had the handbook, but it's too expensive (more than a day's
pay) right now.

> But you don't want to teach how they are actually pronounced,
> but rather you want to teach the phonemes? Aren't all five
> transcribed as simply /r/?

I want to compromise between the two, transcribing phonemically as much
as possible, but still marking differences between languages. So still
using a single symbol to represent one phoneme in a language, but making
that symbol the correct one for the most common allophone, so that if
the same symbol happens to be used for phonemic transcription of some
other language, at least the allophones are likely to be the same, which
will minimize confusion in the minds of students trying to learn
pronunciation.

Thus, if the student is accustomed to a broad transcription of his own
language, by using a somewhat more specific symbol in English
transcription he sees that the English 'r' (or whatever) is not
necessarily the same as his. Similarly, if he is accustomed to a very
specific symbol in transcriptions of his own language, it's unlikely to
be the same one I use unless his phoneme is truly pronounced very much
like the English equivalent.

Another way of looking at it is that I want something that amounts to a
phonemic transcription, but across multiple languages. I want to
uniquely represent the cumulative set of sounds across two or more
languages, but without transcribing phonetic differences that are not
phonemic.

When I provide transcriptions of connected speech, I provide a little
more detail in the transcriptions so that students can see the influence
of running speech on pronunciation, but even then I try to skip any
details that are not relevant to meaning. 

-- 
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

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