IPA Learning Centre

Our aim is to promote the teaching and learning of English phonetics in Hongkong. Our teaching centre, the IPA Learning Centre, is an Education Bureau registered school located in Kowloon. 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:

cough, hiccough
cough v. 咳嗽
hiccouɡh (hiccup) n. 打嗝

解讀:
Hiccough一字始於16世紀, 當時曾拼寫成hikup, hickop, hicket 及hickock. (發出hic聲). 後來人們認為打嗝與咳嗽(couɡh)有關, 既然咳嗽是couɡh, 那麼打嗝也拼寫成hiccouɡh, 讀音/ˈhɪkʌp/ 卻唯持不變. 到了現在, hiccouɡh也可以拼寫成hiccup. 如果英文老師讀出/ˈhɪkʌp/, 要大家默寫出來, hiccouɡh與hiccup同樣正確. 但如果讀出/ˈaɪlənd/ (island ), 大家千萬不要用小時學習phonics的"規律"而默寫成iland. 老師一定會當你錯的! 事實上, 在千多年前舊英語時期(Old Enɡlish), island開始時是拼寫成iɡland或iland的. 但為什麼原本的iland/igland, 今天卻拼寫成island? 明天我會為大家解釋.

認識英語拼寫歷史後, 才會真正明白我們為何不應"看字母, 猜讀音"的.

Derek Kwok

E.D.530468