15 VOWELS OF ENGLISH (color-coded)
http://colorvowelchart.org/ graphic, as presented at Robin Barr's Jan 2012 American University TESOL workshop "designed to train your ears and hone transcription skills to improve pronunciation teaching. "
Each vowel has a color key to cue you, eg "Blue Spoon" for [u] "oo."
Robin mentioned that the original chart had one fewer color, but the New Yorkers won. So, the chart has the "open o" for "auburn dog." I'd like to add "orange" in there between "olive" and "auburn." It's a common enough adjective, but I vary my vowel, depending on my
[ɔ]udience, I mean [a]udience. You know what I mean, [dʒu]?
According to this at the Univ of Manitoba, the Canadian dialect also lacks a distinction between Don and Dawn. Robin showed her expertise in historical linguistics when she gave the names of IPA transcription symbols. Here are some vowels:
Capital [U] is upsilon. Use a loopy U so easy to read
/æ/ is called ash, from the old English sounds for trees
upside-down V is turned-V or caret
barred-i
turned-c or open-o
Three schwas of Am. English: (hi) barred-i, true schwa, caret (low)
two schwas: about and judge depends on stress
sofa : inhale to feel cold air rushing in for point of artic for place of artic height
I hadn't realized until I spoke with Robin at the break, that there are two versions of the IPA. In fact, I found a table of various transcription systems - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English
Am I the only one who finds it ironic that an international standard like the IPA has two versions?
