IPA 

Our aim is to promote the teaching and learning of English phonetics in Hongkong. We provide high quality English phonetics (IPA) and pronunciation courses for people at all levels of spoken English.

The course "Practical English Phonetics and Phonology" is one of our most popular choices. We are very proud to say that the quality and popularity of this course has been key to establishing the good reputation of IPA (HK). Mr Derek Kwok, the Course Lecturer, is an experienced phonetics educator with over 10 years teaching experience in English phonetics. His innovative teaching techniques and moderate sense of humour make the complex phonetics principles all the easier to understand.

The courses "English Phonetics Classes for Students" and "Practical English Phonetics and Phonology for Teachers" have provided students and teachers of English in HK with a better channel through which to understand the most important theories and key skills in pronunciation and many other features of spoken English.

As this Web Site comes into existence, we can now offer our students of phonetics with continuous learning and practice support. The pages under our "Club News" section are especially dedicated towards this goal. We believe that through this Web Site, the students of IPA (HK) will be able to further enrich their knowledge of English phonetics and pronunciation even after they have completed our courses.

 

Today's selected word:

mile, simile, facsimile
mile 英里
simile 明喻
facsimile 複製本, 傳真文件

解讀:
Simile的讀音為可不是si+mile /sɪˈmaɪl/? 原因是mile與simile是毫無關係的.
Mile源出舊英語(Old English) "mīl", 基於拉丁語milia; 而milia又源出於mille的複數, 是古羅馬距離單位"一千步"的意思.
Simile源出於拉丁語simile/similis(相似的意思). 在中英語(Middle English)時期出現.
而英語facsimile一字於十六世紀出現, 源於 fac simile, 而fac是拉丁語"make"的意思, 而simile 依照上述解釋, 是相似(like)的意思.
要了解今天英語字母與讀音為何不可靠, 往往需要了解每個"例外"字的出處及歷史.
學習phonics的學生依字母拼音, 很容易把simile錯讀成/sɪˈmaɪl/, 不信的不妨一試.

Derek Kwok
E.D.530468