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:

hear, hearse
解讀:
Hearse的讀音, 為何不是/hɪəs/? (hear /hɪə/ +se /s/)
如果hearse讀 /hɜːs/, 為何不是串herse? (her/ hɜː/ + s /s/ )
很多人相信英語字母與讀音有一定的規律, 從而熱衷於學習或教授phonics.
但當所謂的讀音"不依規律"時, 卻又很少人會問為什麼, 更少人能找出真正的原因, 十分諷刺!

由Samuel Johnson於1775年4月15日出版的字典(A Dictionary of the English Language), 對英語歷史具有極大的影響力. 在字典中一些"特別"的拼寫是基於他的個人風格或偏好所致, 對日後英文的串字(或拼寫法), 產了深遠的影響. 在他著作的字典中, 有些字是有兩個不同的串法, 例如hearse亦可串成herse. 其他例子有choak-choke, soap-sope, choir-quire等.
-Derek Kwok

Picture below: Samuel Johnson
 
E.D.530468