As native speakers, there are so many nuances to the English language that we don’t even realize. Things like the graphic below give me an even greater respect for ESL learners.
What’s the weirdest thing you can think of about the English language? If you’re an ESL learner, what has been your biggest challenge?
Learning a new language can be exhilarating, but oftentimes the most challenging part of adopting a whole new vocabulary can be actually pronouncing the words. How on earth do you say “xie xie” ? Enter the International Phonetic Alphabet.
With the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), all of the world’s languages and accents – no matter how difficult – are at your disposal! First developed in 1888 by the Association Phonétique Internationale (International Phonetic Association), IPA is a standardized collection of symbols used to transcribe the sounds of all the world’s languages (otherwise known as those funky symbols you see next to dictionary definitions). Independent of the idiosyncrasies of individual languages, the IPA shows sounds in a way that spelling never could. For example, using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, you can represent the difference between “bow” (as in to respectfully lower your head) and “bow” (as in what you wear in your pigtails). So, homonyms – you’re on red alert!
Apart from academia, though, the IPA has a multitude of uses. Classical singers often use the alphabet to study and practice the sounds of other languages they sing but do not necessarily learn. Speech pathologists also use the IPA both when recording speech impediments and diagnosing disorders. And, perhaps most importantly, the Salvation Army Team Emergency Radio Network (SATERN) recommends using the IPA when communicating via text about international disasters. Basically, the IPA can save your life!
Of course, there are other phonetic alphabets as well, like the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA) and the Revista de Filología Española (RFE), however the IPA is the most widely used by linguists and civilians alike since it isn’t specific to any country or language. Overall, the IPA is the way to go if you want to understand more about the sounds and phonetics of any language!
Interested in the IPA? You’re in luck! Mango is excited to now be the exclusive licensed distributor of IPAflashcards. Pick up an IPAflashcards deck of your own and visit IPAflashcards.com for more information.
How have you used the International Phonetic Alphabet? Has the IPA helped you learn a new language?
Our linguists live and breathe language. And every once in awhile they really geek out and we love it! Kelly and Liliana came in wearing fun “Wug” shirts today. We all wanted to know what is a Wug…the Wug Test was designed by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958 as way to investigate how children learn the plural and inflectional morphemes.
Check out this video of Kelly and Liliana explaining the test.
By the way, they got their shirts from The Wug Store on Cafepress.
Every Mango course, chapter, and lesson incorporates our Intuitive Language Construction methodology designed to simulate the way people learn when actually surrounded by a foreign culture through practical conversation. The Intuitive Language Construction methodology consists of teaching grammar, vocabulary, culture, and pronunciation.
We have integrated a variety of interactive tools designed to help improve pronunciation. One of the unique and very helpful features that Mango Languages offers in all its courses is Phonetic Pop Ups. Users can interact with any word, at any time, to view its phonetic spelling.
Our phonetic pop-ups use approximated phonetics, not IPA– the International Phonetic Alphabet. Why don’t we use IPA? Because with IPA you have to memorize a lot of different symbols that you may not be familiar with. We want the pronunciation to be easy with no extra “studying.” Approximated phonetics allows students to actually sound-out the language and helps produce correct pronunciation along with the audio.
We figure that you shouldn’t have to study a course to take another course!
What feature do you use the most to help you with pronunciation?
There comes a time when you are trying to learn a foreign language that you feel you are not making any progress. You still make mistakes; you do not understand what native speakers tell you; you try to speak in the foreign language and they answer in English because they understand you are a novice and do not want to embarrass you, etc. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt that however hard you try there is still a lot to learn? Is there a point that you are utterly confused by the information that you have absorbed and do not know what is correct and what is wrong anymore? At that time you get frustrated and lose momentum; you get discouraged and you start thinking of giving up learning the language, which was maybe the dream of your life. Getting frustrated doesn’t help at all.
Language learning goes through stages or phases. At first you’re very happy and enthusiastic with your new free-time occupation. You are satisfied that you can greet, tell your name and talk a bit about yourself. And people around you start congratulating you on your progress. After that, you start working on more challenging stuff, a bit more grammar is involved too, lots of new words. Around that phase comes the frustration I’m talking about. Beyond the basics, you need to express some more complicated ideas but here your knowledge fails you. You know how to form good sentences; you have acquired a good amount of vocab; but sometimes when you try to construct a new sentence with what you know, it’s wrong because you are missing some new grammar rule or because “that’s not the way we speak.” How come? How many things do you still have to learn? How many more uses do these Japanese particles have? For how long do you still have to strive?
What is the best to do at such moments? Here are some tips:
Re-define your goals: Was your goal to be proficient in a year? This can be possibly achieved if the language you are learning is related to your mother tongue or to another language you are good at or if you learn languages easily, but most of the times this may be far fetched. Language learning takes a lot of time and actually never ends because languages change. Always remember this, because we still learn new words even in our native tongue. I have a friend who teases me on a regular basis by sending me a new word every now and again. At first I thought, “That can’t be true.” But then I thought that it’s only natural.
Try to improve your pronunciation: Try to sound natural. Imitate what you hear and how words and sentences are pronounced. Conquer the difficult sounds. Talk to yourself using the difficult words. Don’t worry if your housemates start thinking you have gone nuts when they see you going from room to room trying to pronounce the Arabic qaf. No native speaker will think of speaking to you in English again!
Listen to a song, watch a film, or read a book in the language you’re learning: I believe this will boost your morale. Choose something relatively easy – don’t go straight to the corresponding Shakespeare – and you will see that you understand some things and you can tell more or less what is going on in a song, film, or book. You’ll see how much progress you’ve made. This will keep you motivated.
And of course, Persevere: Our mind needs time to arrange the new information. Once it does, you will experience a real breakthrough. Keep listening and learning; your mind gets all this information, but you do not realize it. When it is ready, you will be able to speak and say whatever you want.
What other tips worked for you when learning a foreign language?
Good Morning Mango Fans!
Last night, I was motivated to improve the little bit of French that I know, and decided to drive in the world of Mango, in French. I was interested in learning about the etiquette, culture, and vocab when it comes to restaurant outings. I got to chapter six, lesson 41, slide 7, which was about un plat principal, the main course. I read the phrase a few times, heard the narrator say it, and memorized it. Each time I said the phrase to myself, I pronounced the phrase louder and louder, feeling confident with my French accent. I was ready to test my pronunciation skills with narrator using the “voice compare” feature. As I recorded myself saying “un plat principal” as clearly as I could and played it back along with the native speaker for the 4th time, I realized what I was trying to do. Why did I want to record and play my pronunciation back over and over again? I was trying to perfect my French accent. I then started to ponder, about accents, specifically English accents…
There are many countries in which English is the native language, yet in all of these countries English sounds very different because of the accent. In linguistics, an accent is a manner of pronunciation of a language. Accents are not only phonetics, but they are an identity. There are two types of English accents widely spoken in the world today; they are the General American English and the Received Pronunciation (RP), also known as the Queen’s English. In North America, the interaction of people from many ethnic backgrounds contributed to the formation of the different varieties of North American accents (making up a Boston specific accent and one that is specific to Texans).
Looking back at history, it is difficult to measure or predict how long it takes an accent to formulate. Accents in the USA, Canada, and Australia, for example, developed from the combination of different accents and languages in various societies, and this had effects on various pronunciations of the British settlers. Yet North American accents remain more distant, either as a result of time or of external or “foreign” linguistic interaction, such as the Italian accent.
The accent does indeed provide the identity of the country to its native language. When we hear American being spoken, we associate it with the United States and when we hear someone speak with a British accent with think of England. Learning the vocabulary, grammar, and use of a language is very important; however practicing the correct accent allows you to indulge in the identity and history of the language and its native country.
Realizing this, I kept practicing, putting the “voice compare” feature to full use. Un plat principal … u(n) pla pri(n)seepal.
The more I practiced my French accent the more connected I seemed to feel to the French culture.
Next phrase: Comme plat principal, je voudrais le plat du jour (As a main course, I’d like the plat du jour).
They say practice makes perfect… or so I hope.
We are excited to continue sharing our language learning methodology–we call it the linguistic science behind the Mango Languages Online Language Learning Software.
Intuitive Language Construction was developed after looking at current products on the market and listening to users and what they wanted. The one thing we heard over and over is they wanted a program that was fun, easy, and completely integrated.
We listened. Mango Languages includes the following components:
1. Vocabulary (Click to see previous post)
2. Pronunciation
3. Grammar
4. Culture
5. Comprehension
6. Retention
In this post, let’s look at pronunciation. Mango gives you a better, more accurate sense of pronunciation. I bet you never knew a fruit could do that!
In each course, our audio is recorded by a professional, native-speaking voice talent, using a standard “accent free” dialect. Why is this important? Native speakers using a standard accent give you the best possible baseline to model your own pronunciation after.
We also provide additional pronunciation tools to help users:
1. They can see a phonetic spelling at any time, by simply rolling over the word with their mouse cursor. Users LOVE this feature…
2. We also provide the option to hear 2 different audio speeds: fluent and articulate. These are two separate recordings by a professional, native voiceover. This is totally unique to Mango…
Our competition often provides a “slowdown” button, which plays the same standard audio clip, but mechanically slowed down, creating distortion in the voice, and making it difficult to effectively mimic. How do we do that?
3. We offer voice comparison technology in our online language learning system! This feature allows you to speak into a microphone and compare your pronunciation with that of the instructor’s, until you really get it right. This system allows you to compare your voice with both fluent and articulate speeds.
Most language learning systems incorporate some form of pronunciation instruction, but Mango takes it to a much more interactive and accurate level.
Which pronunciation tool do you use the most? Why?
Late last Friday – a few Mango Languages staffers sat down and had a couple drinks while they practiced pronunciation of the “th” sound based on a Learn English Pronunciation exercise we found on the internet. Note…this is not the way we teach English!
The results a very funny video. Check it out and let us know what you think of our English pronunciation!!
