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BOOKLET 3: TRANSCRIPTION
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ACTIVITY: Discovering the production of sounds.
We will do this activity in groups. Work with your classmates to answer the following
questions:
5. Say which consonant(s), giving examples, are articulated with the following
articulators:
8. Place the following words according to the vowel they have in the chart below. Two
are done as a model: feet, bird, moon, bus, stop, saw
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1. SPEECH PRODUCTION
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Nasal tract: oral and nasal sound
VELUM IS LOWERED
VELUM IS RAISED
ACTIVITY 1.
A. Look at the following words; some begin with a voiceless consonant and others with
a voiced consonant. Put them in the table below.
think — sue — vision — hissing — bear — pair — maniac — lost — time — shock
voiceless voiced
B. Give three examples of English words that have a voiced consonant at the end of
the word
C. Give three examples of English words that have a voiced consonant in the middle of
the word
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2. DESCRIBING CONSONANTS
a) VOICING
b) PLACE of ARTICULATION
c) MANNER of ARTICULATION
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These initial consonants have these
places of articulation:
• labiodental: voice
• bilabial: boy
• dental: thin
• alveolar: dog
• palato-alveolar: shy
• palatal: you
• velar: key
• glottal: house
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BILABIAL LABIO- DENTAL ALVEOLAR PALATO- PALATAL VELAR GLOTTAL
DENTAL ALVEOLAR
PLOSIVE p b t d k ɡ
FRICATIVE f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
AFFRICATE tʃ dʒ
NASAL m n ŋ
LATERAL l
APPROXIMANT w ɹ j w
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ACTIVITY 2.
1. Define the consonant sounds in the middle of each of the following words as indicated in the
example:
sinning
reaching
reason
ahead
vicious
major
2. Give three examples of English words ending with the following sounds
voiced bilabial:
voiced postalveolar
voiced labiodental:
voiced velar:
voiceless dental:
3. Below are some English words. Each has a suggested change associated with it. What English
words could result if you perform the change in each case?
Example: cat ☞ change any velar consonant into any bilabial consonant
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a)
b)
c)
4. Transcribe the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ in the following words. BE CAREFUL! One of them is an
intruder!
hutch gem jump chump jaw
witch judge gel Jew yacht
a) b) c)
e) f) g)
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6. You are going to listen to a pair of words; write down the two words that you think you hear. Then describe
(VOICING, PLACE, MANNER) the initial consonant in each word of the pair, as in this example:
The initial consonant in the first word is voiceless, alveolar, fricative ( the phonetic symbol is /s/)
The initial consonant in the second word is voiceless, dental, fricative ( the phonetic symbol is /θ/)
The audios for the other pairs are on the platform as well. Now listen to them and do as in the example:
Pair 1:
Pair 2:
Pair 3:
Pair 4:
Pair 5:
Pair 6:
7. In the words that you will hear, circle the four words in each line that contain the same consonant,
regardless of spelling. Then, using the IPA chart for the English consonants, determine which phonetic
IPA symbol represents the sound common to the four words. The first line is done as an example.
1) This is an online exercise for you to review the organs of speech and places of articulation. Go to this
page and do the exercise there:
https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/acip/course/chapter1/hw/exercise1A.html
2) This is an online exercise for you to review the places and manners of articulation. Go to this page
and do the exercise there:
https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/acip/course/chapter1/hw/exercise1B.html
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3) This is an interactive online exercise for you to review the places and manners of articulation. Go to
this page and do the exercise there:
https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/acip/course/chapter1/hw/exercise1C.html
4) This is an interactive online exercise for you to review the places and manners of articulation. Go to
this page and do the exercise there:
https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/acip/course/chapter1/hw/exercise1E.html
When you’ve done the exercise, complete the following information for each of these words:
Word Word
etching place and manner of articulation lodger voicing
3. ARTICULATION OF VOWELS
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ACTIVITY 3.
1. Listen to these six vowels; choose one option for each of the vowels you hear:
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2. Listen to these group of words; the words in each group have one vowel in common. Which
vowel is it?
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FRONT VOWELS
BACK VOWELS
CENTRAL VOWELS
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ACTIVITY 4.
4) Look at the transcriptions below. Say which word they stand for:
if you focus on the spelling of these words, what do they have in common?
if you focus on the spelling of these words, what do they have in common?
There you fill find the following controls to obtain a visual representation of the different consonants:
Use the controls to obtain the sounds below. Can you say which controls you have used to obtain these
consonants? CONTROLS___________________________________
a. /t/ in the English word tea
b. /t/̪ in the Spanish word té
c. /ŋ/ in song
d. /d/ in deem
e. /ʃ/ in she
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6. Complete the description [place, manner, voicing] of the following articulatory profiles
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/ɜ˞/
Enter in girl and exit through nurse. Try to find your way out of the maze
joining the words that have the mid central vowel /ɜ˞/!
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TRANSCRIPTION
In this type of transcription a careful style of speech is represented. The words appear
in their citation form. This means that their pronunciation is that which appears in
dictionaries.
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/aɪ ˈtɔkt tə ðə ˈtitʃə˞/
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ACTIVITY 5. Read the following sentences. In each of them, an English consonant sound is repeated.
Which consonant is it? Transcribe it, as in the example
(5) Choose three sentences from the previous question and transcribe them. Use https://ipa.typeit.org/
ACTIVITY 6. The chart below has two columns; in the left column the titles of a 11 songs have
been transcribed, and in the right column there are the names of 11 singers/groups in phonemic
transcription as well.
You have to put the song titles and singers/groups in standard spelling, and try to match them.
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• Test your Rock ‘n’ Roll culture •
ACTIVITY 7. Riddles. Can you transcribe the following riddles? What’s the answer to them?
ACTIVITY 8.
(1) One of the main objectives of a pronunciation course is to understand the use of phonetic symbols.
Any good quality English dictionary will show you, along with the definition of the word or its equivalent
in Spanish, a transcription of the word, so that you are able to both pronounce it AND recognize it when
you hear it.
Hidden names. In this activity, you have to find the names of three people. Each name is ‘hidden’ in a
number of columns; in each column there are four words that share a common sound; after reading all
the columns in a name you’ll get the hidden name.
1 2 3 4
First name: assert there arrive about
center air wrong police
lost bear rouge around
explain their train compute
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1 2 3 4
Second name: attack loan sign explain
tally dough nose pretty
bit sew tennis busy
today shoulder gnaw women
1 2 3 4
Third name: mission firm align fish
chef wort marble physics
ambitious worship hill village
obnoxious turn laugh decide
(2) Place the following consonants in the chart below: /j, dʒ, ð, ŋ, h, w/
(3) What are three differences between a phonemic and a phonetic transcription?
(4) How many spellings can you find for the sound /ʃ/?
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(5) What silent letters can you find in the words below? Transcribe the words.
whistle, wreck, debt, castle, hymn, bone, listen, could, answer, often, aisle, naughty
Non-English speaking countries sometimes go out of their way to communicate with their
English-speaking tourists. Transcribe phonemically these amusing announcements to
tourists. CHOOSE TWO OF THESE ANNOUNCEMENTS and TRANSCRIBE THEM
PHONEMICALLY:
2. In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE
MANAGER.
3. Hotel, Japan:
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.
4. A laundry in Rome:
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A
GOOD TIME.
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ACTIVITY 10. Start Making Sense. In this exercise you have to find the appropriate words in the box that
complete the phrases below. The words in each phrase have a vowel in common; for example, in (1) both
“flash” and “pan” are pronounced with /æ/; in (2) “early” and “bird” have /ɜ˞/.
Write the phonetic symbol for that vowel (the target vowel). Two are done as a model.
stone – rug – moon – blue – bird – pan – pains – shoulder – hatter – face – jobs
– Cain – screw – odds – cucumber – king – herring – grease – deeply dreams –
up – panky – crook – sky – break - cheese
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ACTIVITY 11. Transcribe these sentences that have vocabulary from Lengua Inglesa I:
ACTIVITY 12. Can you find three words that have the vowel represented on the charts below?
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APPENDIX A. The pronunciation of vowels
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ACTIVITY 13. 1. How are these words pronounced? Can you transcribe them?
rove span
vice moat
slain meld
stint jute
-s endings are used for plural nouns (six bees), third-person singular of verbs (It smells
funny), possessives (Jim’s pub), and contractions (It’s amazing). All these endings follow
the same pronunciation rules.
q The –s ending has three possible pronunciations: /s/, /z/, and /əz/ .
q The pronunciation of the –s ending depends on the sound that comes before it in the
word.
Listen and write down in the chart these plural nouns.
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APPENDIX B
Fonética y fonología del inglés ——— Transcription resources
There are several things you may do to practice phonetic transcription, beyond what we do in class, of
course. These are some suggestions. One serious problem though is that most of the resources I will
include DO NOT follow the transcription system we have in this course, and many of them are for the RP
accent, not for GA.
You can find some books in the library. I recommend these first:
However it is the only book I know of that covers phonemic transcription extensively, and some of the
exercises are fun to do.
This is an excellent
resource, but again it only
deals with the RP accent.
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Other books that deal with transcription are:
2. PRONUNCIATION DICTIONARIES
There are two excellent pronunciation dictionaries currently available. You can use them when doing
your transcriptions.
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3. INTERNET RESOURCES
These two pages are nice for practicing transcription, and they include both RP and GA:
https://tophonetics.com/
http://lingorado.com/ipa/
http://www.photransedit.com/online/text2phonetics.aspx
http://www.phonemicchart.com/transcribe/
http://tom.brondsted.dk/text2phoneme/
This page also includes both RP and GA, but the output does not differentiate content from function
words:
https://www.phonetizer.com/ui
I am sure you can search the Internet for other resources. Let me know what you have found!
APPENDIX C
Further transcription practice
Transcribe phonemically the following utterances. When you have transcribed them, email me at dario@us.es
and I will send you the answer key.
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5. I object to fixed costs
7. Aunt Mary went to the fun club and lost her hand bag
22. They asked if I am ready to do it. The answer is: Yes, sir, I am
32. They’re playing cards. Did you see them, last night?
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33. I didn’t know you had a dog
37. Did you have a nice weekend? I have had a terrible one!
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62. Can I get some cream and sugar?
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