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Junile Labrador Denampo BSCPE 2 November 19,2016

ENGL021 Speech Communication

What is/are the difference/s between International Phonetic


Alphabet & Roman Alphabet
In the IPA each and every sign (or combination of signs) represents exactly a specific sound,
whereas the Roman Alphabet doesn't work in the same way (most of the time not even within a
single language).
For example: the words "some" and "sum" are pronounced in the same way (IPA /sm/), but
spelled in two different ways. "flood" contains also the same sound (IPA /fld/).
With the IPA it is possible to make an accurate transcripion of the pronounciation of a word, no
matter which language it comes from. The Roman Alphabet is too limited for that.

The IPA
The initials "IPA" are used for both the International Phonetic Alphabet and for the
International Phonetic Association which created it. It should usually be clear from context
which one is being referred to.

The International Phonetic Association


The International Phonetic Association was founded in France in 1886. Most of its original
members were language teachers interested in better ways of teaching pronunciation. (In fact,
until 1897, its name was the Phonetic Teachers' Assocation.)

The association published the first version of its alphabet in 1888.

The International Phonetic Alphabet


The guiding principles for the association as it chose the symbols for its alphabet and decided
how they should be used were:

one sound = one symbol

There should be a one-to-one correspondence between a speech sound and the symbol used to
represent it. A symbol should always represent the same sound, regardless of the language
being transcribed. A sound should always be represented by the same symbol.

A single sound should not be represented by a sequence of symbols, the way that English uses
two letters to represent the consonant at the beginning of thin. Nor should a single symbol
represent a sequence of sounds, the way the English letter x does in tax.

use letters of the Roman alphabet where possible

The association wanted to avoid making people learn a completely made-up alphabet, such as
Bell's Visible Speech, which most found too difficult.

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Junile Labrador Denampo BSCPE 2 November 19,2016
ENGL021 Speech Communication

Since there are many more speech sounds than there are letters of the Roman alphabet, many
new symbols had to be borrowed or created. Even here, the IPA tried to make the novelty as
minimal as possible.

Most new symbols were created by modifying the letters of the Roman alphabet in some way,
for example:
using small capital letters, as in [], [], or [].
turning the symbol upside down, as in [], [], or [].
extending the tail of the letter or adding some other flourish, as in [], [], or [].
Some symbols are less familiar letters from some of the Roman-based alphabets of Europe, for
example, [], [], [], and [].
Some symbols were borrowed from the Greek alphabet, for example, [], [], and [].
Only a few entirely new symbols were created, for example, [] or [].
Major sounds are represented by symbols. Minor modifications of sounds are represented by
diacritics on symbols.

The number of speech sounds that the human vocal tract can produce is vastly greater than the
number of unique symbols that any sane group would want to invent or any person would want
to memorize. In order to solve this problem, the IPA includes a number of diacritics, small
accent marks that can be placed above, below, or next to a major symbol to indicate that the
sound it represents in this case is slightly different from the sound it normally represents. Some
examples:

[n ] -- the circle diacritic indicates that the sound being transcribed is just like an ordinary [n],
except that the vocal folds are not vibrating.
[k] -- the plus sign under the [k] indicates an "advanced" sound. This sound is made with the
tongue hitting the roof of the mouth a little further forward than it does for an ordinary [k].
[o ] -- a nasalized [o], exactly like a regular [o] but with air flowing through the nose as well as
the mouth.
The International Phonetic Alphabet has been revised a number of times since 1888, most
recently at the association's 1993 convention in Kiel, with a few minor changes approved in
1996.

The IPA has become widely used:

It is the standard system for phonetic transcription in the discipline of linguistics


It has been adopted by the American Speech and Hearing Assocation (ASHA), the licensing body
for speech/language pathologists and audiologists in the U.S.
It is used for the pronunciation entries in several dictionaries. This includes almost all foreign
language dictionaries, most recent British dictionaries, and some recent Canadian dictionaries.
(It's still fairly rare in the U.S., but they're having enough problems wrapping their heads around
the metric system.)

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Junile Labrador Denampo BSCPE 2 November 19,2016
ENGL021 Speech Communication

The Roman Alphabet (for calligrapher)


The Roman alphabet, also called the Latin alphabet, is the most widely used alphabet in the
world. Youre reading it right now.

The Roman alphabet has two different forms of each letter: the minuscule or lower-case form ...

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

and also the majuscule or upper-case form ...

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Some other alphabets, such as Greek and Cyrillic, also have minuscule and majuscule forms.
Compare Arabic, which has up to three different forms for each letter depending on how it joins
with other letters; and Hebrew, which does not employ different majuscule forms but enlarges
some letters for emphasis.

The Roman alphabet is also the basic alphabet used to write Western calligraphy in many
languages. So it is quite important :-)

Roman letters reach all round the globe


Who uses this particular alphabet to write their mother-tongue? Most of Europe, including the
UK; Turkey; America, Canada, Australia, much of Africa (including South Africa) and New Zealand,
among other places.

The Roman alphabet is also used to write pinyin, which is a phonetic version of Mandarin Chinese
used in teaching children and foreigners how to pronounce the sounds of written characters.

This means the Roman alphabet is being written and read by billions of people around the world
every single minute.

Important to non-Roman Alphabets


So, who doesnt use it? Some of the other most widely used alphabets include the Arabic, Greek,
Cyrillic, Hindi and Urdu letter systems.

What about written Mandarin (and Cantonese)? Well ... actually those are not alphabets at all.
They use a different kind of writing system entirely. Chinese writing uses a unique symbol for
each concept. By contrast, an alphabet is a list of re-combinable symbols each of which stands
for a sound.

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Junile Labrador Denampo BSCPE 2 November 19,2016
ENGL021 Speech Communication

Brief calligraphers history of the Roman Alphabet


Its called the Roman alphabet for the good reason that the ancient Romans used it, or a slightly
shorter version of it.

(By the way, if you're writing dates or other numbers, here is a list of Roman numerals to help
you translate those 'mmx's into '2010's.)

The Romans got their alphabet ultimately from the Greeks, who got it from the Phoenicians, who
got it from ... well ... a whole mixture of people in the Middle East.

And the Romans spread it all over their empire, which is how it first came to Britain; and so, later,
to the Americas, Australia, etc.

The classical Roman alphabet contained only 23 letters (no J, U or W.) In the beginning, all these
letters were capitals (majuscules). There were no lower-case letters (minuscules). Also, there was
no word separation.

A calligraphic Roman Alphabet


Right back in the first century AD, Roman writers had invented a very handsome, energetic
calligraphic script for 'smart casual' use. It was based on monumental capitals but it was much
easier to write. This Roman alphabet was used for the equivalent of posters on walls, written
public announcements, etc.

It could also be written quite rapidly on paper using a square-ended pen. Quite a lot of fine
manuscripts have survived written entirely in this excellent script. It was the main book alphabet
of the Roman Empire during the first few centuries AD, used to write all sorts of texts in pre-
Christian Latin.

Reference:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101109033037AAFrIY5
https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~krussll/phonetics/transcription/the-ipa.html
http://www.calligraphy-skills.com/roman-alphabet.html

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