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:

food, foot, blood
解讀:
參考以上的IPA, food, foot與blood三字的元音(vowel)都不同,分別為/uː, ʊ, ʌ/. 事實上千多年前的舊英語時期(Old English), food (fōda), foot (fōt), blood (blōd) 三字的元音都是相同的/o:/(介於uː及ɔː之間的圓唇後音).
其後讀音漸漸改變, food(及moon等字)保持長元音但讀音改為/uː/; 而英國南部的人把foot(及ɡood, look等字)的元音變短, 讀成/ʊ/; blood (及flood)的元音不但縮短, 口形亦改為非圓唇, 讀成/ʌ/. 導致今天food, foot及blood三字的元音雖然同樣由字母OO產生, 讀音卻不同.
當今英文字的讀音與拼寫, 往往只是反映出過去字母與讀音的關係, 因此以字母拼音(phonics)去拼讀生字, 難免有錯.

Derek Kwok /ˈderɪk kwɒk/
E.D.530468