Please keep making videos. They're really good. You'll soon take off.

θæŋk juː fɔː ðə ɡreɪt ˈvɪdɪəʊ! The IPA is a wonderful tool for learning languages. But I still believe that for many people this concept is merely inapplicable. It would take too much time for people who aren't into linguistics to learn all these characters (even for English, I don't even consider something more complicated). The answers: 1) Yes, I am! I wouldn't be able exactly to reproduce every sound (especially vowels), but I feel free reading all transcriptions in languages I learn. 2) I'm afraid of French DD

I love small, high quality channels. Keep up the great work. There’s definitely an audience.

I've been thinking about learning the IPA for some time now. Perhaps your videos will finally motivate me? We'll see.

I'm currently learning Chinese as my primary focus and Egyptian Arabic as my secondary. Both are full of very rare sounds. Chinese is very heavy in s/sh-like sounds, Arabic has many sounds involving the throat. Learning both therefore required basically full control of your whole mouths. They also have different writing systems. Pinyin can only help so much due to some allophone that isn't always reflected in the letters. The a is different when following y/i vs everything else. The e in yue, le, and meng are all different. Some sounds aren't even written, like in hui. In Arabic, there's sort of only 3 vowels, but they aren't written and they change quality after a throat consonant. Learning these without IPA would be a nightmare.

I love your content, looking forward to seeing more!

Another cool video about phonetics! Though I have to confess that IPA table still scares me a bit and I prefer to 'play by ear' if there is no IPA transcription for a word in the dictionary

I first learnt IPA when I tried to figure out the "b" and "p" sounds in Español since my first language do not have /b/ sound. After I'm familiar with quite a number IPA symbols and the way to produce their sounds, I found that it also help me a lot in multiple aspects. E.g. 1. Improving English pronunciation by checking the IPA transcription of a word in Cambridge dictionary. 2. To Understand different accents or dialects of a language in a linguistic way. 3. Helping other people in learning my native language (Modern Standard Madarin). There was a course that taught my friend to use pinyin, and I found that pinyin "sh" will mislead learner who is much familiar with English. English "sh" usually pronounced /ʃ/ but Mandarin pinyin "sh" usually pronounced /ʂ/ in standard accent (/ʃ/ to /s/ in Taipei accent) Currently, I'm learning another Chinese language called Fuzhou Chinese (a Eastern Min language) which shares different evolutionary paths and relations comparing to Standard Mandarin as the two languages are both mainly evolved or heavily affected by Middle Chinese. By understanding the patterns of the evolution, I can learn the phonology of Fuzhou Chinese more systematic. For example, the phonologic features of character 直 is shown as follows. Middle Chinese vs Standard Mandarin vs Fuzhou Chinese Initial consonant: /ɖ/ vs /tʂ/ vs /t/ Tone: checked tone vs light level tone vs light checked tone The rule of the evolution is that if the initial consonant and the tone of a character is voiced and checked tone in Middle Chinese, the tone will evolve to light level tone in Standard Mandarin and light checked tone in Fuzhou Chinese. Also, a character with initial consonant /ɖ/ in Middle Chinese would have initial consonant /tʂ/ or /tʂʰ/ in Standard Madarin and /t/ in Fuzhou Chinese.

Really great introduction to the IPA! I've always been a linguistics hobbyist and your video is one of the most digestible introductions to the IPA I've watched. Hope to see those videos in the future!

This channel satisfies my huge interest in languages, thank you so much for these video's :D

This was taught in the Philippines in the 70s at a 3rd year high school level. The course is called Voice & Diction.

Before watching this video, I associated IPA only with beer with a high content of hop bitterness. On the other hand, I see these IPA characters when looking up words in dictionaries, only I don't know the sounds that stand for these particular characters. I studied several languages, but none of the teachers ever mentioned the IPA or showed these signs or demonstrated the sounds. I suppose Asian languages from the Far East would be a challenge for me, because as far as I know they are tonal languages. As a Polish native speaker, I have a rather trained speech apparatus and pronunciation is generally not a problem for me (cult scene from an old Polish comedy: ukposts.info/have/v-deo/eZZ8jpmjhI2Ekok.html), except for the guttural "r" in French or sometimes German. Btw. I wonder, if the IPA distinguishes the pronunciation of "r" between American English, French (a'la Edith Piaf) or Polish ? When it comes to spelling, English is probably the most difficult language - it requires frequent contact with the written word to get by. Asian languages such as Chinese or Japanese are probably a separate category, but I have no knowledge in this area.

i have to say this is a really good video from a really small channel. Hope you get big soon!

Thank you ❤

I love your videos

I wish language courses would use this

Great video. My degree is in linguistics, and I used to be very familiar with the IPA, to the point of being able to take lecture notes in it, often mixed with regular English, Spanish, abbreviations of both, plus medical notation, absolutely seamlessly - but alas, my 45th reunion is this year, and with the passage of so much time, the IPA has almost completely fled my mind. I've been looking for a quickie way to refresh my memory, so you have a new subscriber. BTW, the word "pronunciation" is pronounced with that "u" as a u sound, like the word "nun", not the "ounce" sound you give it. Sorry, my IPA is just too rusty. It's pronOUNCE, but pronUNciation. Super common error for learners of ESL despite the fact that at least in this instance, the pronunciation *is* exactly as both words are spelled.

you got yourself a new sub

I'm speaking 4 languages (all indo-european, 2 slavic and 2 germanic ones) I haven't studied grammar or had knowledge of IPA (until now). I'm able to speak all 4 without a problem and also write without making mistakes. It's not necessary to know either but it makes language learning (and speaking) process easier and faster I guess.

Looks like a great beginning of an IPA related series! :) I'd be excited on next ones. Thank you for the video! Hope it's not to private question: your accent sound like German or Austrian for me, how far is my guess from reality? Thank you again!

I had a quite hard time understanding it like i remembered some sounds but I didn't know what bilabial or stop meant, but I once noticed a patern and BANG I was able to pronounce palatal stop or pharyngeal fricatives. It helps me a lot with conlanging but i have trouble transcribing english to ipa

There is a guy I follow on YT who uses IPA for isopropyl alcohol 😂 Phonetics though, love it! As a language teacher it's very useful.

Well that was a fun, if too short, video. I've thought about learning IPA but it does seem difficult. After 3 years of haphazard study of Korean, I'm just now beginning to read syllable-by-syllable instead of letter-by-letter. The world's only constructed alphabet is in fact a real jewel worth the effort of learning, imo. So, does the IPA capture the physiological elements of consonants truly well enough to learn pronunciation just from physical instructions? I'm having a hard time with some of the Korean consonants that are jut to close to English ones like 'j' and 'ch' -- the differences are pretty subtle, I guess, because I'm having a hard time sounding 'correct', ie, not like an American. But in the end, it seems to me that there are probably hundreds of sounds in the world's languages that I would have to work to be able to pronounce well. Learning just the subset in Korean has been hard enough. I don't think I have the wherewithal to learn _all_ of them from all the world over! I mean, what about all the clicks and such from African languages? Those are there, too, I assume. That just sounds like a nightmare!

bilabial trill go brrrr

For American English, it's "plow", "hiccup", "loch"; example pronunciations for "ough" would be "rough", "bough", "through", "though", "thought", "cough"

I'm familiar with IPA's existance, not so much with it's exact rules. Also yeah, I'm currently trying to learn French and the letters 'e', 'é' and 'è' confuse me a lot. Not even that I can't hear the difference but rather because it's tricky to pronounce them correctly every time. The omnipresent combinations of 'o', 'u', 'e' and 'a' also keep me asking myself how I'm supposed to pronounce them. Like how exactly do I pronounce 'manteau'? I can hear that it's not my 'o' right at the end but I can't figure out how to get the right sound. Is there an actual difference between 'elle' and 'elles' if the next word doesn't start with a vowel? French is tough to speak.

Vowels are harder to distinguish than consonants. For example the difference between /a/ and /æ/ is hard for me.

Why learn it? Easy! You need to pass linguistics 101

Oh, nice. Phonetically consistent alphabet... Something czechs had ever since forever.

I really struggle with the german /ç/ or just ch, it sometimes sounds like russian щ, but sometimes it sounds like /x/

Can you do Kashubian language? please

IPA forced me to confront my perception of my native language and fully destroyed my previous 26 years of life, I can't support it any longer

I am trying but it is too hard

It is prəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən bro not prəˈnaʊnsiˈeɪʃən.😉

Так ты русскоговорящий? Зашибись, а я и не понял

The problem with IPA is it's "international" only by name. The further sound is from French or English the harder it is to write that down. (K Klein discusses it in his video "The worst lunguage refor ever", link below)" Personally speaking, IPA is last thing I would use to learn how to pronouce things. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/aGB9l5qvjYCSyY0.html

genuinely, please don't use IPA (as you described it) to learn pronunciation there is so much more to it than that, literal babies listen to native speakers & they become native speakers & they can't even read

jɛs ˈvɛri ɡʊd ˈvɪdɪjo 😊

Just a note for non-native speakers of English: We don't usually say 'the IPA'. We just say, e.g., 'IPA is a useful tool' in the indefinite form 👍🏻 Another note is that 'pronounciation' is usually pronounced /pɹəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/ (with no diphthongs hiding in there)!