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:

island, isle
解讀:
在千多年前舊英語時期(Old Enɡlish), island開始時是拼寫成iland的 (ey +land), 而ey是日爾曼語意思是"被水包圍的土地". 但iland為何今天卻拼寫成island? 這是與isle一字有關. isle源於舊法語ile /iːl/. 後來的法語又拼寫成isle /aɪl/(受拉丁文insula"島"的影響), 之後英國人漸漸錯誤地把isle與iland聯想在一起, 既然iland /ˈaɪlənd/ 發音近似isle /aɪl/加上land. 那麼iland應該拼寫成island會更能反映其意思. 但發音卻不變(isle的s不發聲). 所以island的發音不是把is+land便成.
今天的英語拼寫與發音關係, 錯綜複雜, 依賴字母拼音(phonics)去猜生字讀音的人, 讀錯字是很常見的.

Derek Kwok
E.D.530468