Anthropology 350: Video X
[Nancy McKee]: Okay, this is a new video. This is video X, the X-files. This is a video of
exercises for the use of IPA. You probably won’t want to use it until after you’ve seen the whole
IPA lecture. And what it’ll give you is about an hour’s worth of exercises. I’ve never done this
before, I’ve never tried to make this work, so we’ll see—it might be a little awkward—we’ll see
how it goes. Now the first thing we’re going to do is a set of exercises on vowels because vowels
are what give people problems. The consonants, you got to learn a few weird symbols, but
they’re really not that tough. The vowels, however, are a terrible mess. They’re very squishy and
they just kind of ooze around. So what I’m going to do now is do a set of very simple, mostly
single-syllable words that cruise through the vowels. What I’m going to do is a set of vowels—
sorry—a set of exercises for each vowel, and then after I pronounce the words and give you a
chance to write them down, then we’ll flash the correct answer on the screen. Then I’ll go onto
the next one. We’ll see how that goes, okay? So here we go. We’ll give it a try and see how it
works.
First I’m going to give you three words, three single-syllable words, with the symbol ‘e.’ Heat.
Heat. Heat. And I’ll give you—I’ll say it three times—and I’ll give you some space to write it. I
mean, some time. Freeze. Freeze. Freeze. Cream. Cream. Cream. Sometimes it’s helpful to
watch someone’s mouth in speaking. I don’t know that it will be for this one, but I think as time
goes on, you’ll find it helpful to look as well as listen. Heat, freeze, cream. Okay, now we’ll
show you sheet number one.
Now, let’s try the next one. This is the sound ‘ih.’ Blip. Blip. Blip. I don’t know why I chose
that, it’s not much of a word is it? Prim. Prim. Prim. And the last one. Drink. Drink. Drink.
Alright, now we can see the sheet number two. You’ll notice on sheet number two that this last
word drink has that odd ‘eng’ symbol, the ‘n’ with the ‘g’ bottom hanging off it. If you’ve never
used it before, here’s a classic situation in which it occurs.
Okay, now the sound ‘ay.’ Shame. Shame. Shame. Pray. Pray. Pray. Trade. Trade. Trade. And
now, sheet number three. You’ll notice—or maybe you won’t—that in English in stressed
syllables that have this sound, there’s this kind of a ‘yuh’ sound that comes after it. So in English
you say ‘shayme,’ and if we cared, we would write a little raised ‘y’ after that. But it’s not
important to us for this class because we’re not getting into it that intensively. But you might just
notice that English has that. It’s called an off-glide. This is also a chance in the word shame for
you to use that s-wedge, that ‘sh’ sound.
Alright. Next sound ‘eh.’ This is the sound made with the Greek epsilon that looks kind of like a
backwards three. Alright, here we go. Pet. Pet. Pet. Hem. Hem. Hem. And the last word, it’s a
gross word and its English spelling is pretty gross too. Phlegm. Phlegm. Phlegm. These are
pretty straight forward. We should see sheet number four now. You’ll notice that phlegm is very
easy to write in IPA and look at how gross it is to write in regular orthography. The reason it
looks so gross is that it’s a Greek word and that ‘g’ just lost its sound in English. Alright, here’s
the sound ‘a.’ That. That. That. Sham. Sham. Sham. And the last word: jazz. Jazz. Jazz. Okay,
let’s look at sheet number five. You’ll notice that each one of these words begins with a nonstandard symbol from English orthography. It’s standard in IPA, of course. That first thing is an
‘ed.’ It’s the voiced interdental fricative ‘thh.’ And then we have an s-wedge. We’re used to that
by now, ‘shh.’ And then we have a j-wedge. ‘Juh,’ ‘juh.’ In some IPA systems, j-wedge is
written a little bit differently. But for American-Indian linguists, and I was trained by an
American-Indian linguist, we always write it j-wedge.
Okay, now we’re going to use a slightly different approach for these next two symbols. These
next two symbols are mid-central vowels. One of them is a caret. It’s—that’s what it’s called.
It’s an upside-down ‘v.’ The other symbol is a schwa. If you open your mouth and you just push
out some air and vibrate your vocal cords, you get the sound ‘uhh.’ Well, when I wasn’t looking
about maybe fifteen years ago, linguists in the United States decided that these were two
different phonemes. I don’t think I would have made that decision. The caret, that is the upsidedown ‘v,’ shows up in stressed syllables. The upside-down ‘e,’ the schwa, shows up in
unstressed syllables. I have seen the printouts of actual speech that shows that these are different
sounds but I do not think that they’re very easy to determine. So try just to use the rule of thumb
that the caret occurs in a stressed syllable, the upside-down ‘e,’ the schwa, occurs in an
unstressed syllable. Since any one syllable word will be stressed, if you’re just giving it in a list,
I’m going to give you two syllable words, one syllable with have the caret, the other syllable
with have the schwa. Let’s see if you can determine the difference. Okay. Puzzle. Puzzle. Puzzle.
Next word. Color. Color. Color. Last word. Rustle. Rustle. Rustle. Okay, let’s take a look at
sheet number six, and you can see here that in the first syllable, which in each one of these is the
stressed syllable, there’s a caret. In the second syllable, there is a schwa. The second syllable in
each one of these cases doesn’t sound very—I don’t know, doesn’t sound very schwa-like, does
it? And the reason for that is that the ‘l’ and the ‘r’ strongly color the sound of the schwa. But it’s
the best way of producing—of writing this sound, so even though it isn’t perfect, this is what we
use. Alas, even using IPA, you can’t get perfect reproduction. That is, you don’t exactly have
one symbol per sound. You’ll use this schwa again and again and it will become more clear to
you how to use it, I think. Also try to keep in mind—but at this point it’s just not worth freaking
out about at all—that sometimes you use that caret in a secondary stress. Anyway, you’ll see
where it shows up. It’s—it’s very frustrating to learn this, but it’s not a cosmic problem. And
suppose you screw up every one of these. It’s not going to ruin your academic life.
Alright, here’s the sound ‘ooh.’ Suit. Suit. Suit. Then tomb. Tomb. Tomb. And the last one: loon.
Loon. Loon. Okay and now let’s look at sheet number seven. There are really no surprises here.
The only real surprise is what a dumb spelling the English spelling of tomb is. And if you’re a
second language speaker of English, it must have been a tremendous drag to have to learn how to
pronounce a word spelled t-o-m-b. Who could ever predict it would be tomb? English spelling
is—as I have bored many students by saying, many thousands of times—the dumbest spelling
system in the entire universe. It’s cool if you’re a linguist, especially a historical linguist, because
it captures all kinds of fossilized forms. But for actually predicting how something’s going to be
spelled or pronounced, ooh, real stupid.
Okay, now let’s do the sound ‘oo,’ and this is usually referred to as a small cap ‘u,’ a small
capital ‘u.’ Put. Put. Put. Hood. Hood. Hood. Shook. Shook. Shook. Alright, let’s take a look at
sheet eight. I should have told you when we were doing the ‘ooh’ sound before that we had got
into rounded vowels, and you can tell by lookin’ at your lips, they’re rounder. Looking at my
lips, they’re rounded. I don’t think there’s any big thrill in these ‘oo’ sounds. We do have that
cool s-wedge, but that’s about it.
Okay, now we’re going to do ‘oh.’ These are pretty easy. Lope. Lope. Lope. Next word: full.
Full. Full. Last word: joke. There goes that j-wedge again. Joke. Joke. And now let’s look at
sheet nine. Probably you’ve got these because this was—this was not even terribly interesting. I
was just thinking as I was reading through these pronouncing them for you—and this may be a
little psycho thought that only a linguist would have—think of—it just made me feel as though I
had some enormous pile of wealth that there are all of these words. English has the biggest
vocabulary in the world. Actually, it kind of surprises me. I would have thought that a language
as old as one of the Chinese languages might have more words. But the reason English has so
many is that, of course, it’s the language that never threw anything away. It has a whole lot of
Anglo-Saxon words, and then when England was conquered by a guy speaking French, it got all
those Norman-French words too. So English has the hugest vocabulary in the world.
Alright. Now folks, we have a sound that makes a lot of Western-Americans freak out. It’s the
sound open-O. It looks like a backwards ‘c’ and it’s a sound that not all Americans have. I think
some Midwesterners don’t have it too. If you don’t have it, don’t worry about it. But you need to
learn to recognize it. That is, you need to learn to hear it. It’s very hard for people, all people, to
recognize sounds that they don’t have themselves. They don’t hear them and that’s what—that’s
the biggest part of what produces foreign accents. So you may not have open-O in your
repertoire, or at least you may not have it in most circumstances. You probably will have it in
some. So I’m going to give you six words instead of three because lots of you will not have this
sound. Don’t worry about whether you have it, you don’t have to have it, but I do have it, and so
do lots of Americans. So your chore will learn—will be to learn to recognize it. Okay, so here we
go with open-O, the sound ‘oh.’ Watch my lips. ‘Oh.’ It is different from the sound ‘ah.’ Watch
how different my mouth is ‘oh,’ ‘ah,’ ‘oh,’ ‘ah.’ Yes, you really can hear the difference. Doesn’t
mean you have to produce it, but learn to recognize it. Okay, here we go. Shawl. Shawl. Shawl.
Lord. Lord. Lord. Now notice how different ‘lord’ is from ‘lard’. Okay? One could get you
chucked out of church, the other one has an open-O, okay? ‘Lord,’ ‘lard,’ ‘lord,’ ‘lard.’ Most
Americans, even those who don’t have open-O in other circumstances, have it before ‘r.’ The
only exceptions I know to that is some Southerners, particularly Texans, who are inclined to say
‘lard.’
Okay, we’re going to move onto the next open-O word. Drawl. Drawl. Drawl. Next one. Fought.
Fought. Fought. Do not be tempted to write ‘fot.’ ‘Fot,’ versus ‘fought.’ ‘Oh,’ ‘ah,’ ‘oh,’ ‘ah.’
What I said three times was fought. Okay. Thought. Thought. Thought. And the last word.
Brawn. Brawn. Brawn. Now, this is like shooting fish in a barrel. You already know that these all
have open-O, so let’s take a look at sheet number ten. And there they all are. Just kind of say
them to yourself and convince yourself that you really can hear the difference, because you can.
The only thing of any interest in here, I think, is the thought that has that nice theta. You might
have put an ‘ed’ in there because sometimes people beginning to learn the IPA screw up the
theta, which is voiceless, and the ‘ed,’ which is voiced. If you put an ‘ed’ in there, it would have
been ‘the-ought’ and that’s not a word.
Alright, now let’s head for ‘ah.’ We’ve got blob. Blob. Blob. Now if I were British I would say it
‘blobe’ but I’m not British so I don’t. If I said ‘blobe,’ how would you write it? You’d write it
with an open-O. Speakers of British English use more open-Os than speakers of AmericanEnglish. And some American-English speakers use more open-Os than others. Okay, after blob
we come to barn. Barn. Barn. Now, a barn is what you keep cattle in, right? And as soon as the
cattle are born, they start to live in a barn, right? So—see, all you guys out there who are saying,
“I just can’t hear the difference. I can’t hear the difference,” yeah, you can, because after a calf is
born, open-O, it starts to live in a barn, low-back vowel. ‘Kay? And here’s the last word. Shot.
Shot. Shot. Again, this is a word that many speakers of British-English would pronounce ‘shote’
with an open-O. But I didn’t say that ‘cause I’m American. Okay, so let’s look at sheet number
eleven, and there are all those nice little ‘ahs.’ I don’t think there’s anything too scary there.
Now, I’m going to include two diphthongs. Diphthongs are pairs of vowels that become
squashed together so that they seem to have a single identity and lose their individual identity.
You probably could figure these out for yourself, but I think it’s—I mean, this is such an
alienating process for so many people, I think it’s just a little nicer to have a chance to go
through these. There are actually a couple of ways of writing these diphthongs, but I’m just
going to teach you one because, hey, that’s plenty to be worried about right now.
Alright, I’m going to read you first a set of three words with the sound ‘au’ in it. Mouse. Mouse.
Mouse. And then crowd. Crowd. Crowd. And last, shout. Shout. Shout. So let’s look at sheet
number twelve and you can see, all you have is an ‘ah’ plus an ‘oo,’ and it gives you this nice
little ‘au’ diphthong. You want to be aware of saying, “Oh, the hell with it, this is too big a drag,
I don’t want to learn this crap anyway. I’m just going to look up the dictionary pronunciations.”
Unfortunately, dictionaries in the United States do not use the International Phonetic Alphabet. I
don’t know—and there are also many versions of the IPA—I don’t know why we can’t all get
together on this, and I don’t know why dictionaries don’t use IPA. I think it would be nice if we
could all agree. But they don’t, not that there’s anything wrong with their system, it’s just that it
would be nice if we were all on the same one. So don’t get yourself confused or distracted by
what dictionaries are doing. And also, I just in real life—and you may be seeing this years after I
make this video tape, maybe even years after I’m dead—I just graded an exam in which some
dork just copied every single dictionary phonetic spelling on his exam. And I thought to myself,
“What a tremendous amount of work that must have been. Why didn’t he just learn IPA?” So
especially with these diphthongs, you may see them sometimes represented in other ways. This is
a very simple, perfectly functional IPA way of doing it.
Alright, this is our last diphthong. The sound ‘ai,’ which is the sound ‘ah’ plus ‘ee.’ And here
they are. Mile. Mile. Mile. It’s hard in English when you have that diphthong with an ‘l’ coming
after it not to pronounce it with a little schwa in there. There is a kind of a schwa-ish sound, but
ignore it. Okay, next word. Thigh. Thigh. Thigh. With a theta. And the last word. Height. Height.
Height. Okay? Now let’s have sheet thirteen, and I don’t think there’ll be any shocks here. Only
thing is you might be one of many millions of Americans who believe that that last word has a
theta at the end of it, but in standard English, there’s no such word as ‘heighth.’ In standard
English, the word is height and ends in a ‘t.’
Alright, that was pretty exciting. Now let’s do some more exercises in which we have a little—a
few more complicated words, and some of these show up in little pairs or clusters so that you can
see some contrast. I’ll read them to you in sets of five and—so that I won’t just bore the socks
off you, I’ll do it in—I’ll just read each one twice, because you have the magic power of the
video tape and you can stop this sucker and go back if you want, or if you need more time to
write it down. ‘Cause you’ll really be bored if I read each one of these three times, so I’ll do it
twice. Brood. Brood. Broad. Broad. Stem. Stem. Steam. Steam. Hope. Hope. Okay, let’s take a
look at sheet fourteen. I don’t think there’s anything threatening there, except maybe you didn’t
hear ‘broad.’ Maybe you heard ‘brahd,’ but I know my own speech and I know I didn’t say
‘brahd.’ I know I said broad. And in fact, if you just rewind a little bit and look at me saying it,
and you’ll see me rounding my lips as I say ‘broad.’ That’s an open-O.
Alright, let’s go onto the next set of five. You remember that the last one on fourteen was hope
so the next one just kind of spins off that one. Hop. Hop. Sought. Sought. That. That. Full. Full.
Fool. Fool. Okay, let’s see sheet fifteen. What are the possible pitfalls here, well, thought, openO that has the ‘ed.’ It has the voiced interdental fricative, ‘thh,’ that makes you dizzy if you just
say it a lot. Say ‘thh’ and it makes you feel like passing out. If you had a theta there, you got the
interdental and the fricative part right but not the voiced part. And in fact, if you put your hand
on your throat and you say ‘thh,’ you can feel our vocal cords vibrating. Whereas if you say ‘th,’
just the theta, you can’t feel it vibrating at all. It’s not voiced. Let’s see, what else. Full. That’s
not a terribly common vowel sound in English, the ‘ooh’ sound, the small-cap ‘u.’ Otherwise,
hey, I think probably they’re not too scary.
Let’s do another five. Fuel. Fuel. And you can do that. You might—it might present you with a
momentary freak out, fuel. But how do you make the ‘yuh’ sound? Just the way you learned in
third grade, it doesn’t change much. Put a ‘y’ there. Fuel. Okay next word, brat. Brat. Then
brought. Now watch me say this. Brought. I am not saying ‘brat,’ ‘brat.’ That’s not a
pronunciation that exists in my repertoire. Brought. It’s an open-O. Okay, bright. Bright. Here’s
a hint, it’s a diphthong. The ‘ai’ sound is a diphthong. And the last one, sponge. That looks very
cool when you write it in IPA. Sponge. Okay, let’s check out sheet sixteen. That fuel has to have
a ‘y’ before the high-back vowel. Otherwise you get ‘fool.’ Okay? It’s not hard, you just have to
remember to put it in there. Remember that brought in my pronunciation—and it’s not that my
pronunciation’s so cool—it’s just that I want you to learn to hear the open-O. It’s not cooler to
say it than not to say it. I just want you to hear it since so many Americans hear it. So that has an
open-O. Bright, has that ‘a-i’ diphthong. And sponge just looks weird, but it does have a caret.
It’s the ‘uh’ sound and it’s in a single-syllable word, said in isolation, so you know it’s going to
be stressed and you know it’s going to be a caret, not a schwa.
Alright, moving right along. My God, everything begins with a P. I’m not even aware that I did
this. Okay, peck. Peck. I don’t even know what a peck as a measure is anymore. It used to be in
the inside of every notebook, but I bet people don’t use pecks much anymore. Poke. Poke. And
the ever popular puke. Puke. Now you know how to make that ‘yuh’ sound so put the sucker in
there. Pleat. Pleat. And plinth. Plinth. It’s a big rock. Okay, let’s look at sheet seventeen. And I
don’t think there’s anything scary here except puke. You have to make sure to put that ‘y’ in
there. And in plinth, I don’t know, it just looks weird. It’s another Greek word and whenever you
get combinations of consonants that seem odd in English it’s usually because the word is
borrowed in from some other language. Plinth.
Alright, we got more. These are a little more complicated yet. And I’ll—again, I’ll read them in
sets of five. Fortune. Fortune. That’s not a particularly elegant pronunciation, but hey, it’s mine.
And it doesn’t matter whether it’s elegant. It only matters if you write down what you heard.
Phaser, as in put your phasers on stun. Phaser. Complete. Complete. Thousand. Thousand.
Jeering. Jeering. Alright, let’s look at number eighteen. The only thing I see with any real
problem here is to make sure that in complete, you used the schwa instead of the caret because
this is an unstressed syllable, and so when it has a mid-central vowel, an ‘uh’ sound, you want to
use a schwa. Jeering, I do not say ‘jeereeng,’ although many people do. I have a sister who does.
If you say that, you might be inclined to hear it when other people don’t use it and we all do that.
But I’m certain that what I said was jeering because I was trying very hard to make sure that I
was using that small-cap ‘i.’
Alright five more, chowder. Chowder. Thoughtful. Thoughtful. Gauzy. Gauzy. Hassle. Hassle.
Calfskin. Calfskin. Alright, now we’re ready for sheet nineteen. In the first one, we have a nice
diphthong. In the next two we have open-Os but I’m sure by now you’re able to hear those, and
at the end of thoughtful, we have a schwa. It might not sound too schwa-like, but it sounds more
like a schwa than it does like anything else. Also the same with hassle.
Let’s do five more. You’re getting so good at this I hardly need to explain anything. Million.
Million. Remember you’ve got a ‘yuh’ sound there. Traction. Traction. Village. Village.
Bleachers. Bleachers. And the last word: blather. Blather. ‘Case you don’t recognize that, it’s an
Irish word that means foolish chatter and it’s both a noun and a verb, and I don’t know, it just
came to me. Alright, let’s take a look at sheet twenty. In million, you want to make sure you put
the ‘y’ in there. I don’t really think we have anything, except maybe the ‘ed,’ the voiced
interdental fricative in blather. And if you’re having trouble with the schwa ‘r,’ just remember
that that’s the way we write it. It should—there should be a way of representing that sound a
little more precisely, and there are a number of alternatives, but this is a very common way, and
because it’s the easiest one, and it’s also the one I learned, I think we’ll stick with it. Just
remember that when you have the sound ‘rr,’ not the sound ‘ruh,’ just the sound ‘rr,’ which is a
whole syllable, it’s schwa ‘r.’
Alright, five more. Spokesman. Spokesman. Researched. Researched. Foolish. Foolish. Chortle.
Chortle. That’s a word invented by Lewis Carroll. Desktop. Why did I put that in there? Desktop.
Let’s look at sheet twenty-one. What’s odd about this? Maybe researched, you’ll want to
remember that it—the sound it ends in is a ‘t,’ not a ‘d,’ even though you spell it with a ‘d.’
Make sure that you’ve got the schwa in ‘chortle.’ It’ll be ‘t,’ ‘schwa,’ ‘l.’ Otherwise, I think it’s
pretty straight forward. Now let’s go for some real exotic stuff. Now that you’re getting very
familiar with this stuff, we can do words of any length. So I’m going to give you what was the
longest word when I was growing up—or at least, it was popularly believed to be the longest
word by kids at my elementary school. I’ve asked other classes of students to tell me what they
think is the longest word and they always come up—I’ve never had the same word come up
twice, and they’re always long, scientific terms, and I’ve forgotten them all. But I remember this
one. Antidisestablishmentarianism. Anti-disestablish-mentarian-ism. Anti-disestablishmentarian-ism. And—you want to know—I’ll just talk while you’re writing this stuff down—
you want to know what it means, it refers to a movement that countered the push to disestablish
the Church of England during the 19th century. And it’s long but it’s not really hard.
Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Okay, let’s do four more. They’ll be easier. Superman. What a dork. Why did I put that in there?
Superman. Anthropophagi. You know what that means? Means person-eating. It’s another word
for cannibalism. Anthropophagi. Cheapskate. Cheapskate. Churlish. Churlish. Churlish means
kind of nasty, truculent, unpleasant. Okay, let’s take a look at sheet twenty-two.
Antidisestablishmentarianism isn’t hard, just really, really long. Superman, that’s not hard at all.
Anthropophagi, remember to start out with that ‘a,’ ‘e,’ digraph, and remember to use a j-wedge.
Churlish, remember that you should use the caret in that first syllable because it’s stressed.
Alright, five more. Exasperated. Exasperated. When I wrote this down for the first time, I wrote
it wrong, and then I corrected it, and I had to go back and correct it again. I made two errors in it,
so be warned. Instinct. Instinct. Instinct. Ahead. Ahead. Surveyors. Surveyors. Election.
Election. Alright, I think these do present some problems, especially exasperated. You might
want to put a ‘k’ in there, but I don’t think we say ‘ek-sasperated,’ so I put a ‘g’ in there. I put an
‘s’ after the ‘g,’ but it’s a ‘z.’ I think that’s the only real problem you’ve got there. Instinct is
weird, isn’t it? It has than ‘ing,’ that tail on the end thing, and then a ‘k’ and a ‘t.’ I think that’s
probably—oh, in surveyors, you’ll want to make sure that you have a ‘y.’ Okay?
Another five. Therapeutic. Therapeutic. It’s a weird spelling in English, it’s not so bad in IPA.
Fledgling. Fledgling. In English you can spell it with an ‘e’ after the ‘g’ or without that ‘e.’
Cushion. Cushion. Violinist. Violinist. And egregious. Egregiously, sorry. Egregiously.
Egregiously. Alright, let’s look at twenty-four. Therapeutic, don’t forget the ‘y’ after the ‘p.’
Cushion, it has a small-cap ‘u.’ Now, violinist, I just changed my spelling of that, my IPA
spelling. I think I say violinist. It’s somewhere, that ‘ist’ part, is somewhere between a schwa and
a small-cap ‘i,’ and I think I first said it with a schwa. Anyway, either way it’s somewhere in
between. I’d take either one as correct. Egregiously is just a weird lookin’ word. I don’t think it
has any particular problems.
Alright, let’s do our last five of this set. Threatening. Threatening. And here I have another
indecisive moment. Should that ‘en’ part that ‘threaten’ part, should that be a schwa or should it
be an epsilon? I’d buy it either way. It’s in between them, really. Unsuspecting. Unsuspecting.
Now here, I think the problem is with the first vowel, unsuspecting, it’s not the primary stress but
I think you want a caret there anyway. It’s the secondary stress. Blinked. Blinked. That’s a weird
looker isn’t it? Power. Power. Don’t forget the ‘w’ after the diphthong. And the last word,
mother. Mother. Okay, let’s take a look at twenty-five. Threatening, well, do we want to schwa
or an epsilon? I’d take either one. Unsuspecting, I do like the schwa at the beginning but I’d
take—I like—I really do like the schwa. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I lied. I like the caret. I like the caret
better than the schwa. I’d take either one, though. Now blinked, you need that ‘ing’ and then
you’ve got to have a ‘k’ after it, okay? Power, don’t forget to put the ‘w.’
Whoa, well now don’t you think we deserve a reward after just strings of words? I think we do.
So what I have here is a nice little poem from my favorite book that I’ve ever read which is a
book called Indian Tales by a really odd guy named Jaime de Angulo. And what these are is kind
of creative paraphrases of Achumawi Indian stories and fragments and poems. I’m going to read
you this whole poem and it’s only got four lines, and you’re going to write it in IPA. Remember
that when you read words in a narrative, they stress changes and sometimes pronunciation of—of
individual sounds may change too. So be ready to reproduce what you hear, not necessarily the
way you would write an individual word pronounced in isolation. Besides, I love Jaime de
Angulo.
A dragonfly came to me. A dragonfly came to me. A dragonfly came to me. With news from my
home. With news from my home. With news from my home. I lie in the afternoon. I lie in the
afternoon. Looking toward the hills. Looking toward the hills. I’ll read it one more time all the
way through once. A dragonfly came to me with news from my home. I lie in the afternoon,
looking toward the hills. Now, let’s take a look at that on sheet twenty-six. It’s longer than
you’re used to but I don’t really think it’s very hard. There are alternate ways of pronouncing
some of these lines, but I think that what you’re seeing now, that the IPA transcription that
you’re seeing pretty accurately represents the way I read it.
Now I’m going to just do one more. I actually have many more cool things, including a real long
Latin one, but we’re running out of time. So I’m going to give you one more little poem, a
personal favorite of mine, also from Jaime de Angulo. And I’ll do the same thing with it that I
just did for this last one. I really, really like this. I am talking to the lake. I am talking to the lake.
I am talking to all in the lake. I am talking to all in the lake. I am not a human being. I am not a
human being. My husband is a werewolf. My husband is a werewolf. And my lover did not come
tonight. And my lover did not come tonight. Okay, I’ll read it through one time. I am talking to
the lake. I am talking to all in the lake. I am not a human being. My husband is a werewolf and
my lover did not come tonight. Now, don’t you think that is a perfect rendition of depression?
Those Achamawi Indians really had something going for them. And so did Jaime de Angulo.
Okay let’s look at sheet twenty-seven. What are the pitfalls here? Talking, if you don’t have
open-o you might have forgotten to listen to the way you heard it, ‘cause I know I had an open-o
there. ‘The lake that the,’ if you said it on its own it would probably be a caret, but in a narrative
‘to the lake,’ it’s unstressed and you’ve got a schwa there. You have a schwa again in the next
line. And how about ‘I am not a human being.’ That ‘uh,’ it’s very unstressed even though it’s a
single syllable word. Very unstressed, and don’t forget to put the ‘y’ in human. ‘My husband,’
you want a caret there, ‘is a werewolf,’ ‘and my lover did not come tonight.’ Boy, I just love
that. On the other hand, there’s ‘com,’ and that certainly needs to have a caret. It’s a single
syllable word and it is stressed so you want a caret there. And that I think is going to be the end
of our video tape X. I hope that these exercises have helped you out with the IPA stuff. And I
guess—I also hope, since we ended with Jaime de Angulo, that you dash out and find his Indian
Tales, ‘cause they’re really cool.