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:

pleasure, pressure
pleasure n. 愉快,歡樂
pressure n. 壓力

解讀:
pleasure與pressure的讀音分別, 大多數人只會注意到pl與pr不同. 參考IPA, 便會發現還有兩點分別:
1) 兩字的字母s/ss讀音分別為/ʒ/及/ʃ/, /ʃ/音即是ship的sh音. 而/ʒ/音則近似/ʃ/音, 但聲帶震動(voiced), 送氣較弱(lenis).
2) pressure的第一音節的/e/比pleasure的第一音節/e/稍短. (可從下圖的oscillogram比較出來,留意黃色線較紅色線短), 這是因為fortis consonant (e.g. ʃ )會令前面的vowel縮短.
由於大多數香港人沒有機會在學校學習到IPA及欠缺適當的語音訓練, 導致對英語音素及長短敏感度不足, 無法辨識上述分別.

- Derek Kwok (27 Aug, 2015)
 
E.D.530468