Increasingly, one can notice that in any kind of work, specialists with knowledge of English are required, and he himself is becoming in demand in many areas of human life. This is the first signal that it is necessary to learn this language at least at the usual level. And, as you know, its study begins with the correct reading and understanding of each word, because a wrong reading can distort the meaning. Transcription of the English language will allow you to clearly and correctly read each syllable of a word without distorting the meaning of the lexical unit itself. Consider what a transcription is and how to read it.
Transcription of English words is…
Transcription is a graphical representation of the sounds of a language. Knowing transcription is the basis of learning a language, because without knowing it, you will not be able to start reading, and your interlocutor will not understand you, because you can pronounce a word with a phonetic error. The pronunciation of English words has always caused difficulty for people starting to learn this language, but this is only a consequence of ignorance of transcription and reading rules. Accordingly, in order to learn how to correctly expresstheir thoughts and correctly formulate statements in English, it is necessary to study transcription, because this is the basis on which further development of the language is built.
If you learn how the transcription of the English language is written, you can easily master oral speech, as you will visualize the structure of the word by decomposing its letters into sounds.
The ratio of English letters and sounds
As you know, there are only twenty-six letters in the English language, and there are many more sounds. Each of them somehow needs to be recorded and voiced. Not all English words obey the existing reading rules. Native speakers learn traditional pronunciation from childhood. But for people studying English as a foreign language, a transcription of the English language was developed. This is a graphic system in which sounds are indicated by special characters.
Sounds and letters in the English alphabet are divided in such a ratio that twenty consonant letters correspond to twenty-four sounds, and six vowels - twenty sounds, which together is the ratio of twenty-six English letters to forty-four sounds. Consider several provisions that characterize transcription.
English transcription: basic rules
- Transcription of the word is enclosed in square brackets - […].
- There are letters denoting several sounds, in transcription they are displayed with different icons.
- There are several types of accents that have differentdesignations in the transcription of the word.
- In the transcription of some words, you can find sounds enclosed in parentheses - (…). This designation shows that the sound in brackets may or may not be pronounced (for example, in the American variety of the language), or not (in the classic British pronunciation).
- A colon after the main sound indicates the duration of its sound.
After you study these rules, you will be able to read the transcription itself correctly. The table below shows the latest changes in the transcription of some words.
|
Record form |
For example |
Another form of notation |
|---|---|---|
| [i:] | f eel | [i:] |
| f ill | [ı] | |
| [e] | f ell | [e] |
| [ɔ:] | f all | [ɔ:] |
| [u] | f ull | [ʋ] |
| [u:] | f ool | [u:] |
| [ei] | f ail | [eı] |
| [ou] | f oal | [əʋ] |
| [ai] | f ile | [aı] |
| [au] | f oul | [aʋ] |
| [ɔi] | f oil | [ɔı] |
| [æ] | c at | [æ] |
| [ɔ] | c ot | [ɒ] |
| [ʌ] | c ut | [ʌ] |
| [ə:] | c urt | [ɜ:] |
| [ɑ:] | c art | [ɑ:] |
| [iə] | t ier | [ıə] |
| [ɛə] | t ear | [eə] |
| [uə] | t our | [ʋə] |
| [ə] | b anan a | [ə] |
A little about transcription in Russian
Difficulties in pronouncing the words of a foreign language occur among representatives of any nationality, since sounds in different dialects can differ quite significantly. Surely, the British, who study Russian, ask teachers to "translate the transcription into English." A kind of simplified version for mastering unfamiliar English words is transcription in Russian, that is, the transfer of phonemes of a foreign language using the sounds of the native. In another way, this method is called phonetic transliteration. In this case, the words will look something like this: [fanatical], [cat], [fish], etc. It would seem that a great way out! However, as we remember, not all sounds can be transliterated in this way quite accurately. Therefore, any teacher will advise you to master the "real" English transcription.
Types of accents
Nouns, adjectives, adverbs usually have the stress on the first syllable. The transcription of the English language shows not only the sounds to whichthe word is decomposed, but also the stresses, which are divided into two groups: the main one - the position is always before the stressed syllable at the top, and the additional one - is located before the stressed word below. For a better understanding of stress, let's get acquainted with the rules for its setting:
- Verbs that have a prefix will usually have the stress on the second syllable.
- At the beginning of a word there are no two consecutive syllables without stress, one of them will definitely be stressed.
- A word with more than four syllables will have two stresses at once - primary and secondary.
- In nouns, prefixes are often stressed.
- Suffixes of any part of speech that are at the end of a word are never stressed.
- The word endings are also not stressed.
The correct placement of stresses will convey the correct meaning of the word.
Reading and pronunciation rules
As you know, an integral part of knowledge of the English language is the ability to translate from English. With transcription, which must be studied from the very beginning of the language course, it will be possible to memorize a lot of words quickly enough.
After you understand the rules regarding transcription, you need to turn to the rules of reading, which, first of all, begin with the correct definition of the type of syllable. So, in English there are open and closed syllables. Open ends with a vowel: game, like, stone - the 1st vowel in the word is read in the same way as inalphabet. A closed syllable ends in a consonant: pen, cat, bus - a vowel in a syllable gives a different sound.
In addition to simple sounds, there are diphthongs. This is the name of a complex sound consisting of two simple ones. In many cases, it can be represented as two components, but this rule does not work in writing.
Important to know
English is a language that is required in many areas of human life, which means that its knowledge will be useful to everyone not only for self-development, but also in life. Knowledge of English begins with the ability to read - nouns, adjectives, English verbs (with or without transcription). This is the foundation you can't do without.
