Reddit mentions: The best phonetics books

Try getting him some really high interest reading material instead of just depending on school work to help him improve his skills. For example, my son loved the Goose Bumps series of books when he was a 3rd grader. If you don't know them, they are fairly cheesy scary stories appropriate for little kids. Or if he might prefer science fiction or sports stories of joke books or comics, find some of those. If you go to the local library, the librarian can help you pick some things. Then let him do his 20 minutes reading about things he enjoys, and the time will go faster and easier for you both. You can increase the time by a minute or two each night, and before you know it, he'll be reading for 30 or 40 minutes at a crack and wanting more.

The librarian can also help you set him up with books that progress in difficulty--so you can begin with slightly easier books that won't frustrate him or wear him out, then keep challenging him a little each time as you go.

I'll also recommend a great book called Phonics Pathways that can help him master language. I have used it often to tutor second and third grade students. A companion teaching tool for home use is Reading Pathways, which will help build fluency in his reading.

Finally, I suggest that you meet with his teacher and perhaps the principal, as well, to talk about his struggles right away. If he has a good teacher, he or she will want to do everything possible to support his learning so he doesn't fall farther behind.

Totally unfair.

This child is much closer to being an excellent speller than you give him credit for.

He's trying to use phonics -- good for him.

What you need to explain to him is that the rules he is trying to use for spelling are Webster's rules for German derived English words, while the spelling words they have given him are almost all derived from Latin. Thus, he must use Webster's rules for Latin derived English words, and they are not the same rules.

Also, you must work with him on correct pronunciation. He is writing these words exactly the way he thinks they sound. If you correct his pronunciation, he will be half way to the goal.

civiluzation... Civil is the correct root. He thinks the suffix is "uzation". Simply explain to him that the correct pronunciation is "ization", as in injury and intent, and not under or until. Can't remember which is the right sound? A cute trick you can play with latin-based words is to think of another word with the same root but a different suffix. In this case, "civilize" works well. It will have the same spelling structure. Notice that the second 'i' in civilize is much clearer than the same 'i' in civilization -- it's much more obvious that civiluze is wrong than that civiluzation is wrong.

Explain that "tion" is originally from Latin (-tionis), passed to us via French (-cion/-tion), with a pronunciation and "proper" spelling decided on by Noah Webster. Reward him for remembering the correct spelling of the "shun" sound in Webster's Latin. Explain that if the root word is polysyllabic (civ-ilization, etc.) there is a good chance it is of Latin (or other) origin, and if it is monosyllabic (running, eating), there is a good chance it is of German origin. Introduce him to a good list of Latin-derived pre/suffixes. There aren't that many.

monarkey Again, a beautiful attempt at spelling this world correctly using German spelling rules. Too bad this word is from Greek via French, otherwise he'd have gotten it right. All he needs to remember is that in Webster-Greek, "archy" sounds like "arkey" in Webster-German.

dominints Another example of mispronunciation. It's not "ints", like integers, it's "ance," like dance, with a little less emphasis on the "aah". Again, a Latin word via French, and again, you can get some spelling help by looking for an alternative form: how about dominate? Notice it's not dominite.

corispond Another Latin word. Detecting a pattern yet? Here he's perfectly followed the German derived spelling rule for making the first 'o' long by not doubling the final 'r' consonant in a monosyllabic root word having one vowel with a vowel as the first letter in the suffix. Again, he has a minor pronunciation problem with i vs. e.

illiterate Did he spell it right? I'm curious. Does he think this word is pronounced illite-"rate"?

Want more info? Try, here or, for a more in-depth version, "The ABC's and All Their Tricks. (I have no affiliation with either of these.)"

Edit: An actual teacher --- I just homeschool my kid --- made a great point about this test being an assessment. Since that's the case, I don't think it should have been returned to the student. Getting all these questions wrong when you thought you knew what you were doing doesn't do anything good for anyone's self-esteem, nor does it give a good impression to those not in the know.

--Sincerely me, an adult who as a "gifted child" tested as a 3rd grade speller while in the 8th grade and taught himself to spell a little better as an adult by doing some good old RTFM on our language.

TLDR: Kid is much closer to spelling well than anyone gives him credit for. I blame the education system for trying to force him to flash memorize tens of thousands of words instead of teaching him some basic phonics or explaining why it is that not all words follow the "when two vowels go walking the first does the talking" rules.

It's always fun to listen to "first airchecks", people always seems more willing to try and take things in different direction. From a writer's standpoint, I love the monologue. The world I write these sides from is a united earth, and a variety of accents really adds another dimension to them. Definitely don't be afraid to use your accent to your advantage. A lot of people try to cover it up; don't. Own it.

Beyond that, enunciation should be your key focus right now. See if you can find any training materials that focus on speech clarity. Speaking Clearly is a good starting point, lots of good exercises.

The reason why this happens is because you are setting unrealistic expectations for yourself. Chances are you are comparing yourself with a prolific casual speaker who have the personality for being outgoing and talkative, and not to mention the near lifetime of him/her talking everywhere.

Get to the training wheels again. You do this by taking time every week (about 30 to 1 hour everyday if possible, more if you have extra time) to train your speaking skills. Emulate actors from TV shows and movies. Take accent training courses. Read an entry level book on the art of rhetoric.

Organize your thoughts clearly by using mnemonic techniques to remember the structure of your thoughts point by point. For example, you could divide your explanations into 10 or more "ideas" that you can easily remember. Select a keyword for 10 of those ideas and remember those 10 words with the mnemonic techniques. To remember your ideas, remind yourself of those 10 words, one at a time, and chances are, you will speak more clearly.

The beauty of using memory techniques is this will also increase your attention span as a side benefit so your 2.) will not happen in future.

Let me give you a roadmap that you can tinker and fit to your own lifestyle:

Monday to Friday: 1 hour from 5 AM to 6 AM (assuming you need to get out of the house after 7). Do 4-5 exercises of accent training course. Select a TV show, for example, say Brooklyn nine nine, since they use exaggerated way of speaking for each of the characters and repeat the lines exactly like those characters. Pick a character that has a personality that you wish to have. And choose two or more characters for shorter duration so that you can have some speaking flexibility.

Saturday and Sunday: 2 hours.

It can be in the morning, evening or night time, but stick to that period from that point onward if possible. Do your usual Monday to Friday routine. And after that, Practice giving speeches. Do the mnemonic techniques to remember ideas from a non fiction book and try to give speech yourself for 3-10 minutes at a time. Do a weekly recording of yourself speaking in your smartphone so that you can track your improvement over the course of the coming months.

A great site to get this sort of information is the British Library's new exhibit, Evolving English.

There are at least hundreds of recordings all around the world. And Wikipedia has pretty detailed descriptions of particular native dialects (for example, the Canadian Dialect).

Also, in a post I made a couple days ago, I mentioned the Atlas of North American English, which is a fantastic resource for folks interested in North American dialectical differences.

https://www.amazon.com/Exercises-French-Phonics-Francis-Nachtmann/dp/0875632157/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=french+phonetics&qid=1573506967&sr=8-1

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This book a friend gave me is pretty good.

I highly recommend ABCMouse.com. Pair that with "Explode the Code" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0838814603/) and a broad subject book like School Zone's "Big Preschool" (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0887431453/).

Sorry I don't have blog links to provide but these are commonly used things and provide a good foundation. I can answer specific questions if you'd like.

I currently homeschool my 3.5 year old daughter and 6 year old son.

Juliette Blevins' Evolutionary Phonology comes to mind right away.

>Unless we have some awesome linguo-biologists here, in which they can show all of us up!

Generally, I think historical linguists and philologists fill the role of that word you just made up. :)

You probably just need a phonetics course. Most of the challenges with 'sounding anglophone' involve not being able to make certain sounds reliably, e.g. (in IPA notation) /y/ and the nasal vowels /ɑ̃/ /ɛ̃/ /œ̃/ /ɔ̃/. Check out the 'French Sounds' Youtube channel, a book like this, and maybe find a one-on-one tutor (iTalki?). Again, you almost definitely need to work on general pronunciation more than developing some regional accent.

I actually met/talked to him recently- he says he's not planning on publishing anything directly from the surveys right now, as they were primarily designed to help him teach his Dialects of English class at Harvard. The page does say he's working on an atlas though, but those things take years and years to put together, and are usually very pricey.

There is a Phonological Atlas, if you have $900 to spare. The Dictionary of American Regional English (which was just completed, after about 50 years of work) is also quite fun, but similarly expensive.

https://www.amazon.com/American-Accent-Training-2nd-Book/dp/0764173693 is a solid course, I would also recommend that you start by working through this course:
https://www.amazon.com/American-Accent-Training-Grammar-Audio/dp/0764196510
It teaches you the basics of the American accent and pretty much all the grammar you need at the same time

Hi!

That “weird” phonetic spelling is derived from the International Phonic Alphabet (IPA). An interactive version can be found below:

http://www.ipachart.com/

Each sound in languages worldwide are assigned to this alphabet and it is used in numerous ways such as helping children to acquire language, learning a new language or learning the pronunciation of words. It’s used in many fields such as speech language therapy and in some instances, forensics.

For example, “hello” would be transcribed as /hɛˈləʊ/

The forward slashes are used to indicate the start and end of a word or phrase. It’s often used by linguists to transcribe the sound and inflections made by words, for example, different accents may produce a different IPA transcript. You can try your own words here:

https://tophonetics.com/

One of the coolest things I found about IPA was it’s use in criminal investigation. For example, in the 70s, there is an the Ted Kaczynski “Unabomber” case where the analysis of his voice, accent and word choice was used to help pinpoint the killer:

https://youtu.be/mC73RSXafjU

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/22/545122205/fbi-profiler-says-linguistic-work-was-pivotal-in-capture-of-unabomber

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions regarding the IPA or phonics please hmu and I’ll be happy to assist. Here is a link to the textbook by Rachael Anne Knight I used in university to study Phonetics if you were seriously interested in learning how to use it:


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phonetics-Coursebook-Rachael-Anne-Knight/dp/0521732441/ref=asc_df_0521732441_nodl/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310977525294&hvpos=1o27&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5089921460476181905&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045217&hvtargid=pla-581568737966&psc=1&th=1&psc=1

Going off of what others have said regarding finding syllabi, I don't think you'll find an online Introduction to Hispanic/Spanish Linguistics course. As a doctoral student, wouldn't you be comfortable with some introductory texts on the subject?

While I think the materials /u/patricks12345 are good, I don't think they are actually introductory. There are some good (or at least, often used) texts that I've seen/used:

https://www.amazon.com/Introducción-sociolingüística-hispánica-Manuel-Diaz-Campos/dp/0470658029/

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-English-Contrasts-Course-Linguistics/dp/0878403817/

https://www.amazon.com/Introducción-Lingüística-Hispánica-Ignacio-Hualde/dp/0521513987/

https://www.amazon.com/Introducción-lingüística-española-Milton-Azevedo/dp/0134840313/

https://www.amazon.com/Introduccion-Linguistica-Espanola-3rd-Spanish/dp/0205647049/

There are also books on specific subfields that can follow up to these, just as normal textbooks do for "basic/general" linguistics.

https://www.amazon.com/Fonetica-Fonologia-Espanolas-Teoria-Practica/dp/047130946X/

https://www.amazon.com/fonología-españolas-Routledge-Introductions-Linguistics/dp/1138684007/

https://www.amazon.com/Fonética-fonología-espanolas-Armin-Schwegler/dp/0471466492/

https://www.amazon.com/Los-sonidos-del-espanol-Language/dp/0521168236/

https://www.amazon.com/Sintaxis-y-morfología-lengua-española/dp/0131899198/

https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentos-teóricos-prácticos-historia-española/dp/030017098X/

https://www.amazon.com/Breve-historia-lengua-española-revisada/dp/022613377X/

It is doable technically, but you would need to work with a professional voice coach/phonetics expert to fix this, and they are not cheap by any means.

On your own you can look at various books, start with Ann Cook, Lisa Mojsin:

https://www.amazon.com/American-Accent-Training-Speaking-Pronouncing/dp/0764114298/

https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-American-Accent-Lisa-Mojsin/dp/0764195824/

Also worth looking at books/CDs/materials targeted at artists doing foreign accents, e.g.

Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615461506/

It's definitely a thing I've tried a few of these tapes. It depends on the person - my goal was to pass as someone born here, and I do now.

It isn't available on-line.

It's best to get it from a library. Or you can shell out more than 50 bucks and buy it.

Sadly, it is not available as an e-book.

I’ve written a short handbook covering the important elements of #Phonics. It will be out on Wednesday.

99p. Read it on your iPad or iPhone in full colour:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZNT8D6P

The colour paperback will be available later in the week.

Try the Explode the Code books. The series works with my reluctant kindergarten readers. They start from introducing letters and sounds and continue through third grade level.