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:

puddinɡ vs puddle
puddinɡ n. 布丁(甜品, 甜食)
puddle n. 水坑, 雨水坑

為何puddinɡ與puddle同樣的字母U, 讀音卻不同?
可利用詞源學作解釋:
Puddinɡ一字源出於古法語boudin. 在中古英語(Middle English)時期出現於英語.
而法語字母ou讀[u]音. 因此英語puddinɡ的u讀[ʊ]音.
而puddle源出於古英語pudd, 英語與德語同出自West Germanic語系, 因此puddle與德語Pfudel(pool)近似. 而pudd的u讀短音[ʌ].
在不了解英語生字的源出歷史之前, 依靠字母拼音, 是很不智的!

事實上字母u至少可以有以下7種讀音:
/uː/ - e.g. June /dʒuːn/
/ʊ/ - e.g. put /pʊt/
/ʌ/ - e.g. cup /kʌp/
/ɜː/ - e.g. turn /tɜːn/
/ɪ/ - e.g. busy /ˈbɪzi/
/e/ - e.g. bury /ˈberi/
/ə/ - e.g. focus /ˈfəʊkəs/

The Myth of Phonics系列
本系列所選出的字例,有助大家認清英語字母及發音的不規律性;我們傾向憑熟悉的字或字母讀音組合,去推算另一生字的讀法而很容易出錯。因此我們不應依賴字母拼音或Phonics作為語音教學。要避免發音錯誤,除了聆聽可靠的示範外,是參考其國際音標(IPA)。

Derek Kwok
E.D.530468