IPA, plus why you sound so gringo whenever you say /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/

If you entered the Sounds of English and Spanish animation, you probably saw that letters were written between bars. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you might have seen that here too. That’s the way we graphically describe a sound, for example, in Spanish, the letter "p" will always be produced phonetically as the sound /p/. In English, the letter "p" will be /p/ in most cases, but don’t forget about words like "phonetics" or "alphabet".

This system of phonetic notation is called the International Phonetic Alphabet. It was created in 1888 by what in 1897 would be known as the International Phonetic Association (also called IPA). It was a bunch of French linguists who wanted to create a phonetic system that could be applied to any language. The idea was to devise a way to teach a realistic pronunciation. I’d say they were pretty successful; the International Phonetic Alphabet suffered a few revisions, something completely natural considering it was created over a hundred years ago, but the core organization of vowels and consonants remains the same since 1888. You can see the last version here.

At the beginning, this Frenchmen’s idea was to allow sounds to have different articulations depending on the language, but soon they decided a universal alphabet was better. And this is where this useful tool could turn against you if you don’t know how to use it. Of course Peter and Pablo both start with the sound /p/, what there’s no way you’re going to convince me it’s the same sound! (Next paragraph contains same heavy theory, but if you skip it, you’re going to miss one very important revelation)

Both sounds are bilabial; the point of articulation being the upper and lower lips. Both sounds are voiceless; the vocal chords do not vibrate while saying /p/. Both sounds are plosive, or oclusivas, this means they are produced by a burst of air. But that’s the short explanation, the longer one would say plosives consist on three stages, 1.- closure of the oral cavity (closure, oclusivas, get it?), 2.- air pressure built up in the mouth, 3.-realease of that air in a burst (explosion, plosive, get it?). That is the manner of articulation, and the term says a lot about the sound. In Spanish they are called oclusivas, because the most important thing about the sound is the first stage, the closure. In English, on the other hand, they are called plosives, it’s all about the explosion. It’s so much about the explosion, that when the sound is in a stressed syllable, we even write /ph/. There’s so much air coming out, we say there’s some aspiration going on, an extra sound. And that’s the main difference between English plosives and Spanish oclusivas.

And that’s why you sound so gringo whenever you say /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/!

Notice how they’re all created with a burst of air, those are the plosives. I’ll go back to this in some other post, let it sink in, tell me when you’re ready.