DICTIONARY TRANSCRIPTION

Discussant: Princess Mher A. Alegado.

BSE-ENG 1A

Dictionaries usually provide a phonetic transcription.

Phonetic transcriptions are usually written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), in
which each English sound has its own symbol. Phonetic transcription is a system for writing the
pronunciation of words.

Although it is possible to use perfect pronunciation without reading the phonetic transcriptions,
the system is very useful, because for every word it clearly shows you every sound it contains.

With phonetic transcriptions, dictionaries tell you about the pronunciation of words. In English
dictionaries, phonetic transcriptions are necessary, because the spelling of an English word does
not tell you how you should pronounce it.

Examples:

colonel /ˈkərnl/
actual /ˈæktʃuəl/
Vision /ˈvɪʒn/
Example /iɡˈzampəl/
accurately /ˈakyərətlē/
You can choose one of the two phonetic transcription systems - both use the symbols of
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):

1. Broad, or phonemic, transcription, for example, /ˈwi/

2. Narrow transcription, for example, [ˈwi]

BROAD TRANSCRIPTION - ignores as many details as possible, capturing only enough
aspects of a pronunciation to show how that word differs from other words in the language.
Broad transcription, also sometimes known as ‘phonemic’ transcription, involves representing
speech using just a unique symbol for each phoneme of the language.

Phonemic transcription uses phonemes to show the pronunciation of words. It is written

between slashes, as in the examples below:
 kiss /ˈkɪs/

 kill /ˈkɪl/

NARROW TRANSCRIPTION - captures as many aspects of a specific pronunciation as

possible and ignores as few details as possible. Using the diacritics provided by the IPA, it's
possible to make very subtle distinctions between sounds.

To show the exact pronunciation of a word, narrow transcription is needed. For the same two
words, for example, we would write:
 kiss [ˈkʰɪs]

 kill [ˈkʰɪɫ]

Note that in narrow transcription, square brackets are used instead of slashes.

Phonetic transcription on the other hand specifies the finer details of how sounds are actually
made.

References:

http://australianlinguistics.com/speech-sounds/phonemic-vs-phonetic/

http://www.antimoon.com/how/phonemic-transcription.htm

https://easypronunciation.com/en/american-english-pronunciation-ipa-chart#comments_to_the_chart

https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~krussll/phonetics/transcription/broad-narrow.html