06: All the sounds in all the languages - The International Phonetic Alphabet

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

Science

4.8 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2017

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

English writing is hugely inconsistent: is “ough” pronounced as in cough, though, through, thought, rough, plough, or thorough? And once you start adding in other languages with different conventions and writing systems, things get even more complicated. How’s a person supposed to know whether to pronounce “j” as in Jane, Juan, Johan, Jeanne, or Jing? In the 1800s, linguists decided to create a single alphabet that could represent any sound spoken in any human language. After several revisions and competing standards, we now have the modern International Phonetic Alphabet with 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and a surprisingly passionate fanbase including linguists, musicians, and people who like cool symbols. In episode 6 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren and Gretchen talk about the history of the IPA, how it works, and some of the fun linguistics games and stories that have arisen around the IPA. For more information visit the show page: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/159237203511/lingthusiasm-episode-6-all-the-sounds-in-all-the

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Lingheas, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.
0:21.8	I'm Gretchen McCulloch.
0:23.0	And I'm Lauren Gorn.
0:24.2	And today we're going to be talking about the international phonetic alphabet.
0:27.6	But first, it was International Mother Language Day in February.
0:31.1	And even though it was a couple of weeks ago now, on February the 21st, I think it's still
0:35.5	worth saying a belated happy mother language day to you, Gretchen.
0:39.1	Happy mother language day to you, which we are wishing our mother languages of English,
0:42.4	so that's kind of boring.
0:43.3	Both wishing in our mother languages.
0:44.6	Do you have any other heritage languages that you wish to acknowledge?
0:47.7	I mean, technically Scottish Gaelic is probably a long time ago a mother language for me,
0:51.8	but my ancestors were Lohlin Scott, so it's a really long time ago, a mother language for me, but my ancestors were Lowland Scots, so it's a really
0:54.9	long time ago. Well, happy Scotts Gaelic Day. Do you have any other? My grand maternal
0:59.6	language is Polish and thanks to generally typical Australian attitudes towards non-English
1:06.3	speaking in the 1960s. That wasn't passed on to any of my mother's generation at all. So, yeah, it's still a
1:13.1	very recent part of our family history. I'm the only grandchild who ever learned enough Polish
1:17.5	to speak with my grandmother in her mother tongue. Oh, that's cool. Which is cool. I wish I still
1:22.1	spoke that much. Well, it's, I mean, it's cool that you learned it. It's not cool that no one else did. I know. It's probably questionable how much Polish I remember today.
1:30.4	Yeah, I always like to think of my nan and my lack of opportunities to learn Polish on February 21st.
1:36.2	What are you been up to? Or what's coming up?
1:37.9	Well, by the time this episode goes out, I will have been to South by Southwest, where I will have done a panel with Aaron McKean and
	...

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