Prof Francisco Zabala - 2016 How to go about a phonemic transcription The objective of this course is to help you improve your pronunciation We use phonemic transcription to address several needs: to begin with, it helps you reflect on the pronunciation of English; it also provides you with a set of systemic choices that will help you make sense of the chaotic nature of the English spelling system Below, you will find a guide to help you cope with this Steps to follow: Chunk the text Remember that each chunk constitutes a unit of information processing: your listener will interpret what you mean chunk by chunk We normally chunk main clauses, subordinate clauses and long phrases Spot the content words in the chunk Stressing and meaning are closely connected in English Listeners fish for stresses so as to understand the message of what is being said Stress the prominent syllables in all the content words and in the polysyllabic grammar words in the chunk This will help you focus on what syllables are protected by stress and what syllables are likely to be obscure Stressed syllables take strong vowels, while weak syllables almost always take weak vowels (especially ?+ h+ H and sometimes T+ t – remember that at times ? can even be dropped!) Strong forms: decide whether the grammar words in the text are strong or weak They are likely to be weak unless there are istances of: a b Prominence: contrast /citation / emphasis Position: i DO or HAVE used as main verbs ii HAVE used as obligation (have to), or causative uses iii Auxiliaries in short yes/no questions and short answers iv Auxiliaries in full yes/no questions v Negative contractions vi Stranding of auxiliaries, the verb to be or prepositions vii Buttressing of prepositions Choose the right vowel! Although the English consonant system presents some difficulty,it is the vowel system that puzzles Spanish speakers In order to decide what vowel to choose in each syllable, you should start by analyzing these variables: a Monosyllabic content words: i Basic Vowel Pattern: (CC)V(CC) ii Silent iii Radical iv Exceptional words of frequent occurrence b Polysyllabic words: i Magic ii Double consonants iii Suffixes and prefixes Apply all the other rules you learn as the course develops (e.g linking , plural and past tenses, etc.) Prof Francisco Zabala - 2016 Sample transcription We clearly remember that there were some men at the table They seemed to be very sad One of them was talking on his phone • Chunk the text On average, there tend to be syllables per chunk Therefore, we need to split this sentence We chunk off the subordinate clause We clearly remember | that there were some men at the table.| They seemed to be very sad | One of them | was talking on his phone.| • Spot the content words We chunk here again to balance the number of syllables Here, we chunk off the subject from the predicate We clearly remember | that there were some men at the table.| They seemed to be very sad | One of them | was talking on his phone.| The verb to be is almost always weak, regardless of whether it functions as a main verb or as an auxiliary verb • Stress the prominent syllables of each content word and polysyllabic grammar words We clearly remember | that there were some men at the table.| They seemed to be very sad | One of them | was talking on his phone.| • Sort out strong and weak forms At the beginning of the course, we won’t be using strong forms, as they are exceptional uses There are no strong forms in this text • Choose the right vowel We clearly remember | vh !jkH?kh q?!ldla? { Most unstressed syllables take a weak vowel Schwa is the most frequent one that there were some men at the C?s C? v? r?l !ldm ?s C? !sdHak {{ They seemed to be very CdH !rh9lc s? ah !udqh !rzc {{ All the stressed syllables take a strong vowel We can predict most of them thanks to the spelling rules we study Basic Vowel Pattern: when one vowel letter in the spelling is blocked by consonants in a monosyllabic word, it takes a short vowel sound This helps you choose between d and 29 Also, ? is ruled out because this syllable is stressed One of them | !vUm ?u C?l { table.| sad | Silent makes the previous vowel letter say its name When there are two vowel letters together, the first one generally says its name This word takes h9., a long vowel, because this doesn’t follow the Basic Vowel Pattern This word of frequent occurrence doesn’t follow the silent rule However, as the spelling is , this `.-like sound must be U Letter can’t take z was talking on his phone.| v?y !sN9jHM Pm gHy !e?Tm Many words, such as and are examples of how the sequence merged into one sound, N9 in this case is silent here