The IPA and the IPA That Created It

[@TobiasMoes]

Now that i've seen this video, I think it's pretty strange that I never learned the IPA in school. Not in English class, not in French class and not in German class. I mean, it seems really useful.

[@Xidnaf]

As far as I can tell, the idea that you should introduce IPA on top of everything else a student should learn when teaching a new language wound up not being particularly popular. IPA wound up being useful for linguists, but not so much for students :/

[@TobiasMoes]

I guess that's true. I've always been interested in languages, so I wouldn't have minded it, but just learning the sounds of any particular language you're learning will do. If you're planning on learning many languages though, it can definitely make things easier.

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

Xidnaf it's easier to learn a language if you learn the IPA and the sounds the language has

[@GABRIELFILMSTUDIOS]

Tobias Moes We learned the part of the IPA for the specific non-native languages we learned and new vocabulary was always also written down in broad transcription.

[@fobuloustv]

I come from China and in English classes the teachers would write out an English word followed by its respective IPA to help with pronunciation. But the thing is we were never taught IPA and can only pick up the symbols as we go, so for the longest time I thought it's a pretty stupid idea to learn a whole new system in order to help with learning a whole new language. Thanks to this video I finally understand the existence of IPA

[@KaiHinLkh]

"start memorizing the IPA symbols of the languages you speak." and it's Cantonese...

[@louisng114]

+Kai Hin Lkh IPA works for Cantonese, but Jyutping is an easier system.

[@tubefu]

+louisng114 look up Cantonese phonology. it's actually pretty simple for consonants. however the vowels chart seems kind of messy right now due to different people interpreting them differently at different time periods. i just revisited the wikipedia page and it has changed since my last visit a few months ago. fortunately i like the changes and agree that it matches the current Cantonese. it's a lot more streamlined with fewer symbols used.

[@tubefu]

+louisng114 look up Cantonese phonology. it's actually pretty simple for consonants. however the vowels chart seems kind of messy right now due to different people interpreting them differently at different time periods. i just revisited the wikipedia page and it has changed since my last visit a few months ago. fortunately i like the changes and agree that it matches the current Cantonese. it's a lot more streamlined with fewer symbols used.

[@tinypenguinhk]

Let’s be honest, we can’t even agree on which romanisation to use for Cantonese.

[@israellai]

@@tinypenguinhk IPA all the way ;)

[@jedimasterpickle3]

...so that's what those weird letters at the beginning of wikipedia articles are.

[@adamthornton7880]

+jedimasterpickle3 Yep.

[@MisterHunterWolf]

@Qwerty Jerm he also forgot /j/

[@ggbjhijgghj]

/jɛp/

[@30IYouTube]

Still, the English "e" tends to make the /e/ sound.

[@kuutti256]

@@ggbjhijgghj it's /jɛpʰ/

[@axisboss1654]

I know IPA A) Because I'm a Conlanger B) Because I was bored one day

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

Wario Toad 32 I'm a conlang er too I have made 7 languages and am working on an 8th one

[@The0Stroy]

The requirement of learning IPA stops me from becoming conlanger (And I'm already worldbuilder).

[@okovermekeamglight4563]

The0Stroy you don't need the ipa to make conlangs. I actually made one of my first conlang without ipa

[@scptime1188]

Ha same

[@panainpublic]

@@The0Stroy you learn it from using it, so you don't even really notice that you're learning IPA. And you don't even _have_ to learn it - it just makes things easier.

[@eirinym]

Not to be confused with the delicious beverage also known as IPA.

[@edragoninja317]

eirinym Indian pale ale?

[@LL-bl8hd]

Thought this was about beer... I was disappointed.

[@Mr.Nichan]

Of which I only know because it always comes up first on Google searches no matter how many years I only was ever looking for the alphabet.

[@Twentydragon]

8:11 - I think it might be a good idea to use IPA _alongside_ your other pronunciation helps. You wouldn't need to verbally change anything, either; it'd just be there as a visible supplement, and seeing it in use might even be a launching point into learning it for someone.

[@andersyu4464]

Twentydragon I agree

[@inventorofmachines]

I second.

[@xXJ4FARGAMERXx]

I third

[@ygemkaa]

I fourth

[@peterfireflylund]

Not using the IPA is a lot like not using the metric system.

[@Xidnaf]

Peter Lund I don't think we'll ever move an inch on either.

[@Dragom4n]

Peter Lund Which is why Americans have their own silly pseudo-IPA "dialect"... [ʃ] → [š], etc. We can't handle metric :-)

[@minzungopa]

Dan Parvaz omg My phonetic teacher finished her doctor or master (I'm not sure) and use the wedge IPA with me too. I just know why thanks to your comment!

[@Chrnan6710]

Peter Lund dont go there

[@AwesomeAriados]

*cough*

[@gagaoolala9167]

Oh, physics jokes, "There's a _definite limit_ on how far you can get." Xidnaf, you joker!

[@ZardoDhieldor]

+AFarma Ant And then he's getting the inequality symbol the wrong way... :D

[@Bibbedibob]

+Zardo Dhieldor ikr^^

[@EebstertheGreat]

Is "definite limit" a mathematical term? What is an "indefinite limit"?

[@gagaoolala9167]

A limit that exists, I'm pretty sure, is a definite limit.

[@EebstertheGreat]

Or just "a limit."

[@diogogouveia4108]

This is *MADNESS*! No... This... is... *LINGUISTICS*!

[@30IYouTube]

Joke!

[@BogusmanTheSwagman]

Same thing lmao

[@LyraBestPony]

One of the best parts of IPA is the way it's organized into a chart. It's much easier to memorize the symbols when you are mapping the chart in your head.

[@allisond.46]

Yeah, the chart’s pretty helpful.

[@cattycorner8]

The old way had less than 10 characters.

[@CavemanTheBeast]

...not to mention how every time you google IPA, the first 20 results are beer

[@Liggliluff]

When I search it, the 6th result is the phonetical association homepage; 4 of the above are about the ale and 1 is a disambiguation page. Searching "IPA alphabet" gets you better results.

[@solarisNT-v4j]

@@Liggliluff international phonetic alphabet alphabet

[@itsManuval]

"All of the world, or Europe at least" lol Eurocentrism at it's best xD

[@shyambuddh5546]

Manuval this needs more likes

[@oliveranderson7264]

I’m glad that was specified in the video

[@tomasroma2333]

Remember “World” War 1?

[@panainpublic]

@@tomasroma2333 the US got involved after a bit and Japan did some stuff, but yeah it was mostly in Europe.

[@Alaois]

@@tomasroma2333 I don't understand what you're getting at. World war 2 was fought by countries in all continents apart from Antarctica. That is a world war

[@guanlinhuang6139]

東 is all over the channel. You just love it, don't you ; )

[@andersyu4464]

David Wong “east”

[@highgroundproductions8590]

thx

[@Liggliluff]

/tʊŋ⁵⁵/

[@destinationparanoia7266]

I do like a nice dong

[@dtschenz]

@@Liggliluff That's an example for when IPA turned out to be strangely insightful! Knowing Japanese, I only read this as 'higashi' or, in other contexts, /toʊ/. Without you, I'd totally have missed that. … In retrospect, I'm not sure I really wanted to be in on it, though. But hey, thanks!

[@israellai]

wow, at least some good came out of the spelling madness of English and French.

[@Liggliluff]

and /j/ isn't even based on the English or French J sound. That's quite impressive. I prefer using the letter J for /j/ and not Y for /j/. Y should be used for /y/ instead.

[@obviativ123]

@@Liggliluff I think /j/ is based on the German sound for J

[@Liggliluff]

@@obviativ123 J /j/ is used in a lot of European languages; the Germanic, Slavic, even Hungarian-Finnish. Y /j/ is used a lot in African languages.

[@obviativ123]

@@Liggliluff ... and English 😂 (as in yes).

[@1000eau]

@@Liggliluff Yeah, it's logical from an english or french pov, however, in most european languages /j/ is used for y beacuse that's its original use since it was created for the latin alphabet.

[@SomeRandomFellow]

now let's make the international phonetic abugida

[@SmashhoofTheOriginal]

International Phonetic Logography

[@killmenow6982]

What's the logographic for "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis"?

[@SomeRandomFellow]

SmashhoofTheOriginal international phonetic logographical abugidal syllabic alphabetic alcoholic beverage

[@SomeRandomFellow]

Lance Hendrickson what language? Chinese?

[@killmenow6982]

For all logographs. Ever.

[@md83ar]

00:27 IPA is 20% cooler.

[@Xidnaf]

md83AR /)

[@fjsarchives4255]

Xidnaf i have a confession to make U R M U M G A Y

[@fjsarchives4255]

@@galoomba5559 no w

[@30IYouTube]

@@fjsarchives4255 TOOOOOOOOO LOOOOOONNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG

[@servantofaeie1569]

should be [ʔaĕ pʰʲi ʔɛĕ ʔɪz tʰʷwə̃ɾ̠̃i pʰɚsɪ̃nʔ kʰʊ̹ᶫɫɚ]

[@talideon]

One of the things I like about IPA is that for all its complexity, it's actually surprisingly intuitive.

[@ganaraminukshuk0]

This is a true story: I once made an unpublished quiz that tried to establish what the pronunciation of my name, Ganaram Inukshuk, with the gun sound from the word gun, the arr sound you make if you're a pirate, the rum sound from the drink you drink as a pirate, the in sound as in you're going into something, the ook sound from took, and the shook sound from if you're being a troll and wanna shake a can of soda and offer it to a friend in hopes that they get geysered, was really supposed to be, and that's not to mention the proper stressing of each syllable (eye-den-tickle versus eye-den-t'kll, hint hint, vsauce dord). Instead, I made up bogus answers and, 1, not only did the answer choices translate to really obscure things (like Welsh + Icelandic + Norse + astronomy + biology + austronesian languages + Sesame Street), but 2, I had no idea what I was doing and ended up mixing together the slash things and the bracket things. I'm going to linguistic hell, aren't I?

[@paddlesaddlelad1881]

thats why the ipa exists

[@__---__----__---__]

I think exposing people to IPA even without explaining it to them is a benefit. At schools in Northern Europe we never learned IPA as far as I can recall, but our textbooks for English and other languages always had IPA provided whenever you were learning a new word. So even though I didn't know what each individual symbol meant I developed an intuition for them by experience. The same way you learn spoken languages - by association (of meaning and sounds in that case). And the distinct lack of IPA and the aversion to learning it and the confidence in those stances seem like one of those backwards things about our dominant culture (USAnese) when looking at it as technically an outsider.

[@pirangeloferretti3588]

Yes same for me in Italy. Especially many yesrs ago when we didn't have KZbin or other easily accessible listening tools.

[@dv82lecm62]

From a point where as a child, I tried to translate and read Graffiti, I have gradually had a gravitation toward this obscure science. I wanted to learn Kumeyaay (a native people in Sam Diego county) at sixteen. My mom shot that idea down. I am now teaching myself Arabic and am slightly proficient at Spanish. I like to call myself an autodydactic linguist.

[@YindiOfficial]

About time you discussed the IPA; it's such a sophisticated efficient way of helping people understand the phonology of a language; unfortunately, not many people know about it or even care to learn it.

[@holdthatlforluigi]

Besides just learning the symbols, it's very useful to understand some terms. For instance, /t/ is a "voiceless alveolar stop." You can find this out simply by clicking the 't' on most Wikipedia IPA charts. Knowing those words helps tremendously in learning new sounds and developing a sort of phonetic awareness. edit: "new" does not have a k

[@amitkothekar8406]

/k/ is simply a voiceless velar stop

[@ExcitingEnglish]

Great Video!! Are you learning any languages?

[@Xidnaf]

shahmirali1098 Thanks! Yep, I'm learning Spanish and Arabic.

[@Xidnaf]

***** No.

[@ExcitingEnglish]

***** You don't have to be a muslim to learn arabic.....

[@AlexIncarnate911]

Xidnaf classical arabic??

[@AlexIncarnate911]

Magister Luna Sidus Other Semitic languages sound like Arabic, and Arabic has a spin-off languages/Socio-dialects that sound fairly different from Classical Arabic(which is not spoken) and each other.

[@TheAngryFatMan]

I had to study IPA as a vocal music major. Whenever we were working on a new song, we were required to write the words in IPA as well as do both a literal and idiomatic translation.

[@ImmortalNature777]

0:49 How about "Intentionally Pretentiously Ambiguous"?

[@aerobolt256]

Intentional Purposeful Ambiguity

[@mberg1974]

I use IPA quite frequently, Lagunitas IPA tastes great, especially in a tall glass.

[@simonenoli4418]

thank you. someone had to explain my sudden thirst.

[@Arctagon]

5:10-: Here, you're in fact talking about phonetic and phonemic transcription. Phonetics is only interested in the physical aspect of sound-meaning the distinction between languages is irrelevant-and thus wants to describe it as precisely as possible. Phonology is more concerned with how these sounds form systems and patterns in different languages, and how different languages make use of these sounds in different ways to express meaning. 7:37: It's not an equation, and the way you describe it makes it sound more like a graph. You're also saying that the limit of your function is greater than infinity, which doesn't make much sense.

[@sashasguitarcovers5921]

The fact that there's a symbol for every single sound is just so calming to me.

[@jopeteus]

My native language (Finnish) is pronounced exactly how it is written... With minor expections like ng being pronounced ŋ. Nevertheless, I find it very easy to differentiate sounds from others and IPA is a very easy concept for me.

[@Tomas-tx9sv]

Like me, Spanish is pronounced as written too :D

[@TheVurnPL]

Finnish does have certain stuff written not how they are pronounced though, like compound words or certain unmarked sandhi processes.

[@Coelocanth]

М.Б. Spanish's ñ represents the voiced post-alveolar nasal and not the voiced velar nasal. It might just be we experience a different dialect of Spanish.

[@graup1309]

People usually don't have problems differentiating between sounds that are distinctive in their own language. What is a problem are sounds that aren't on that spectrum. Like [c], if you don't have it in your language, you'll have trouble recognising it, because you don't usually have to. And don't even get me started on pronouncing it. And especially with vowels it gets even worse, if that sound is following a strict phonological rule. Because then we are actually trained to ignore those differences. An example of this would maybe be [ʔ], as it is used in many languages at the syllable onset, if that syllable would start with a vowel otherwise. The English language also sometimes uses it instead of [t]. But our orthographies don't use it. And most of us have a really hard time with a language that has words like [ʔaba] and [aba] with one meaning "house" and the other meaning "dog". It gets even worse, if is used for morphological differences with [arga] (I swim) and [ʔarga] (I swam). These words are all likely going to sound the same to us if our languages don't make that differenciation.

[@Liggliluff]

@@Tomas-tx9sv Spanish isn't exactly pronounced as written. The word "que" is pronounced /ke/ but it written like it would be pronounced /kjue/.

[@carlavlund5841]

Hey, Xidnaf! I simply love your videos, and it's great to see someone on youtube, doing something else than playing games and comedy! If you don't already have decided the topic for your next video, I think it'd be cool to hear you talk about the scandinavian languages (danish, norwegian, finnish and swedish). I myself am from Denmark, and I'd love to see a video where you cover the four languages! Also, if you do, try pointing out some things, that are unique for each of the languages ;)

[@DavidHWatson]

Is Finnish considered a scandi language? Because I know that in terms of linguistic families, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are all part of the North Germanic branch of the IE family (including Faroese and Icelandic). While Finnish is part of the FinnoUrgric family, along with Hungarian, the Sami languages, and I believe Turkish and the other Turkic languages. So linguistically, wouldn't Finnish be quite different than DNS, even though it's geographically in the same region?

[@gwaur]

David Watson Carl Bille Finnish is not a Scandinavian language, and even though many think so, Finland technically isn't part of Scandinavia either. "Scandinavian" refers to the dialect continuum that exists between DNS. Usually when talking about the region of DNS+Finland, people say Fenno-Scandinavia, or Nordic Countries which would also include Iceland. And yes, Finnish language is very, very different from all the Scandic languages, as Fenno-Ugric languages don't even remotely come from the same source language(s) as Indo-European languages.

[@DavidHWatson]

***** Thanks for the information. I couldn't remember the difference in meaning between Nordic and Scandinavian. By the way, is it Fenno or Finno? I've generally seen Finno.

[@gwaur]

David Watson For the language group, Wikipedia mentions both Fenno and Finno (also Ugric and Ugrian). For the region, Wikipedia mentions only Fenno. I personally prefer Fenno because for me /e/ and /o/ are easier to pronounce in such close proximity than /i/ and /o/.

[@DavidHWatson]

***** Huh! Yeah I never thought about the proximity of the vowels. Also, do you know if Nordic includes Faroese?

[@Liggliluff]

(8:05) That's the spirit! Ignore the problem and hope it goes away! But you have used IPA before, like with aspirated consonants. You can still make an attempt to avoid it, but you can still include it as a helping hand, and in fact, teach your viewers about the alphabet slowly.

[@ch-lum]

I totally agree with what you said last, like last sentence last. I have no idea what you're talking about sometimes but I find it soooo fascinating

[@sherikanman]

IPA is the bane of my existence. I'm learning around 10 languages right now, and I really don't want to think about writing them in IPA to explain how things are pronounced xD. Especially with Dutch. My god, the diphthongs and vowel sounds....

[@BogdanGusiev]

Writing IPA for individual words or even individual symbols can make a lot of sense in english in particular. For example I would not write ipa for vowel in for "like", "same", "wave", "table" but I would for "live", "simple" etc. because they are less regular.

[@DavidHWatson]

I'm learning several languages as well and in my own notebook I don't usually write IPA. When I'm writing the alphabet I tend to write approximations of the sound, or add an example using a word that I already know. Ex: I will write something like "e in English 'bet'" or "é in French 'parlé'", instead of ɛ and e. Unless you're explaining things to a linguist, there's no need to use IPA, especially if it's just for yourself. That is, unless you eventually learn IPA and find it easier to use. Basically just use whatever you find easiest to help you learn.

[@DavidHWatson]

Scar Joseph Blood I think the purpose is just to help you learn. For example, when learning a new language, and especially the sounds in that language, a person might want to write down the alphabet along with how each letter is pronounced (as well as maybe the name of the letter). The same might go for new words. Chances are most people will only do this at the beginning, and once they get used to the sounds in the target language, they will just write out words using the language's script.

[@sherikanman]

Scar Joseph Blood You seem to have good memory and can remember the different sounds foreign languages have. I don't write down how things are pronounced either, I take on the YOLO polyglot approach and physically go out and attempt to speak/learn the language the way I learned English, by just speaking it.

[@sherikanman]

David Watson I think it's actually safer to relate the symbol/letter of the new pronunciation in the language(s) you are learning rather than anglifying it. I think it might just be personal preference and learning styles, but I, personally (and for example) found it easier to relate the Japanese "R" sound with the らりるれろ (ra ri ru re ro, respectively) hiragana and katakana for it. It helped me personally seperate the language in my head from English and French. Some people might not have the confusion of sounds (or the mixing of random languages in speech) like I do! haha

[@julianvargo9997]

This video has opened so many doors to what I can do know. Wow. I have been researching Spanish dialects and Ibero-Romance languages, and have found so many articles and notes about this (Theta Symbol) sound. Not until know have I realized the texts were referring to the Spanish lisp which makes the th sound. I've been listening to so many videos of native speakers speaking rare dialects and languages trying to pick out interesting things I found. Thank you so much!

[@mickmickymick6927]

It would be very helpful if you used IPA in your vids, you could just put it in brackets after the other description. I come from a different dialect of English so when people say 'like the 'a' in father', that tells me nothing about how it sounds.

[@log.fjord47]

I love watching voiceless velar fricative close front unrounded vowel voiced alveolar plosive voiced alveolar nasal open front unrounded vowel voiceless labiodental fricative’s videos.

[@deadadus]

I am a native thai speaker and the difference between the word chicken and egg is not merely the aspiration, rather it's more like the difference between k and g in English.

[@GeeRad]

+Pann Sermchaiwong Supposedly word initial K is generally aspirated in English (without us even realizing!), unaspirated K often sound a bit like Gs to us. I've been to Thailand and I remember your word for chicken sounding a lot like English "guy". I'm learning Hindi at the moment which distinguishes voiced and unvoiced, aspirated and unaspirated consonants. It's tricky!

[@อริย์ธัชอริยานุชิตกุล]

I am also native Thai speaker but I must say that I disagree. Since Thai lack /g/, so we tend to interpret it as ก, the unaspirated k. The actual /g/ should be somewhat like denasalized ง.

[@ferencgazdag1406]

But the difference between k and g in english is just voicing, they are otherwise the same sound

[@Marg1312]

Six years later and this video is still helping. I love your sense of humor and I sure learned a lot!

[@thesuomi8550]

5:41 lmao you just aspirated the one that wasn't supposed to be aspirated 🤣😂🤣

[@servantofaeie1569]

no he didnt

[@ImSquiggs]

This channel is nothing short of fascinating... great information and perfectly presented

[@LARAUJO_0]

Which came first the kaːj or the kʰaːj?

[@LARAUJO_0]

Seriously, did no one get this joke?

[@Dustywitch]

yes, yes they did. Some people just don't know how to tell a joke is all ;)

[@valdisviktoria5619]

oi m8 wheres iceland on your microsoft paint-drawn map? It's not that small

[@iamalittleboat]

The most difficult thing to me when writing IPA is knowing when to use and how to separate the sounds [ e ə ɘ ɛ ], the nuances are so hard to detect when listening to speech-samples, or even just trying to figure out how I myself pronounce the /e/-phoneme in different words. I'll note that I never write English with IPA, only Norwegian.

[@francaellerman2276]

My dad taught me IPA before I could read or write so I would understand the differences between pronunciation in Spanish and English (I grew up bilingual) better and it's safe to say I can pronounce foreign words well enough my friends get scared.

[@jc.9]

I love IPA it's so smart I started learning it when I was 6yrs old because I have a bilingual family and wanted an easier way to learn the languages. I recommend people who are struggling with pronunciation should learn IPA.

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

Your keyboard doesn't have upside down r? Just turn your keyboard around and press r! ɹ

[@zergreenone8111]

ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ IT WORKS!!! ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ

[@xTsukeo]

I have about linguistics as a part of my one-year English studies here in Norway, and I really think that you're videos have helped me a lot to understand most of what we are talking about in advance! So.. erm, thanks!

[@kara88bg]

With enough IPA you can speak any language you want, though no one will understand you.

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

J88go people of that language will

[@Lunarri]

I love your videos. you somehow make linguistics entertaining where no one else has for me.

[@Mr.Nichan]

I memorized everything except some of the diacritics somewhere around Highschool I think. As for real lingists, I'm now a linguistics major in undergrad and I heard the first major-targeted class requires you to memorize pretty much the whole thing. It's also more complicated in real life because there's still systems other than the IPA that get used, especially in older papers (Americanist for many Native North American languages and Uralic for some Eurasian ones) Also, people don't always use IPA in a completely consistent way. I find it is particularly common when people want to talk about allophony or dialectical variation and so do transcriptions in brackts - [ ] - but don't bother to change certain symbols whose allophony they aren't talking about; for instance, English /r/ and /ʌ/ are often written as [r] and [ʌ] in phonetic transcriptions, even when that's completely inaccurate according to standard IPA definitions.

[@andysos1234]

You seem like a genuine and cool guy I've enjoyed all your videos so far, good luck with everything bro

[@finnsalsa9304]

At 0:27 IPA is 20% cooler. I think it's from my little pony. :)

[@caenieve]

かたつむり Ken Ashcorp too, though indirectly

[@bonbonpony]

The /a/ vs. [a] is also a distinction between _phones_ (the actual sounds) and _phonemes_ (the _abstract_ sounds, which are usually a group of similar but distinct sounds which nevertheless are not distinguished in speech, because they don't change the meaning of the word). For example, the same phoneme /t/ can be actually pronounced as [t] in "still", [tʰ] in "till", [ɾ] in "better", or [ʔ] in "mitten", but despite the sounds being different, they are treated as a single phoneme /t/ in English, because if one says "still" with [tʰ] instead of [t], it will still be recognized as the same word, just with a somewhat weird accent. There are languages, though, like Hindi, for example, where these two sounds [t] and [tʰ] are distinct phonemes and using the wrong one can change the meaning of a word.

[@Gallalad1]

As someone who isn't a hardcore linguist IPA will always stand for Indian Pale Ale

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

NotSoSober Gamer xD

[@DavidHWatson]

Hey Xidnaf, cool video as always. A slight correction on the start of linguistics: I believe modern linguistics is said to have been started around 1800, or in the 1800s. But as with almost all things in linguistics, it all depends on who you talk to! I've seen/heard arguments for Ferdinand de Saussure, for Jakob Grimm, and for William Jones as all being the fathers of modern linguistics. And then if we consider antiquity, I think most major societies understood the idea of linguistics, even if it was called something else by the scholars at the time, or even if concepts such as familial relationships were off. I definitely know that the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indians (during the Sanskrit period), and probably the Persians, Arabs, and many others, had papers/articles/books written on linguistic concepts related to their language - phonology, morphology, grammar/syntax. Some even wrote on how their language was related to other languages.

[@Whynot402]

lol Intentionally Purposefully Ambiguous International Phonetic Alphabet by International Phonetic Association! :D

[@youssefelamrani]

I thought this video was gonna be about beer because IPA is a type of beer (Indian Pale Ale) but I ended up liking it anyways. Keep up the good work!

[@jacobfraser8930]

No New Zealand on the world map?! D:

[@jacobfraser8930]

Rohan Zener Is Xidnaf from Australia? I hear no accent in his speech. If not could you please elaborate on the relevance of your comment.

[@jacobfraser8930]

Rohan Zener You say that being surprised that an important country, not being on a map of the world, is fine?

[@jacobfraser8930]

Rohan Zener Yank hillbillies?! We ain't got no "yank hillbilles" here in Nz.

[@jacobfraser8930]

No worries... All your comments make sense now...

[@jacobfraser8930]

Rohan Zener

[@HamzaDudgeonthelinguist]

Loving your linguistic videos! Keep making more!

[@BFDT-4]

Here is a goal. Get Microsoft to create a fast way to type the IPA in Skype. EOM. :P

[@natqevalhiindisguise141]

*Discord *Discord

[@marmjtin]

Great video. I love linguistics, and even if I know most of the things you talk about its a really nice channel :). Btw you forgot to comment that ipa actually has one or two sounds that some linguists think they don't even exist, or letters to represent the ones that people with cleft palate make, for example.

[@patrickhodson8715]

I thought you were gonna recount the story of how two linguistics guys went out for a beer and they had an IPA beer and that was the inspiration for coming up with the IPA alphabet.

[@ro-yq2ky]

WHY ARE PEOPLE DISLIKING YOUR VIDEOS?!?!? You are so funny and it's interesting!!!

[@VulcanTrekkie45]

Just to show the difference between narrow and broad transcription, Xidnaf's dialect would transcribe that phrase as: [neɹoʊ tɹeənskɹɪpʃɪn] Meanwhile, my dialect would have it written as: [næɹoʊ ʧɹeənskɹɪʔ͡pʃɨn] Broad transcription of the phrase would be: /ˈnæroʊ trænˈskrɪpʃən/

[@Znex2718]

It would be transcribed in my dialect as: [næɻʷəʉ tʂʰɻʷæ̃ːskrɪpʃn̩]

[@Znex2718]

I did have it in there when I was writing it but it disappeared for some reason.

[@AlexIncarnate911]

Znex Is this Irish English?? XDD

[@Znex2718]

Nah, Aussie English. Irish English is way different.

[@AlexIncarnate911]

Znex hmm interesting.

[@jonasbrm]

I love language. even though i have been born and raised in a completely danish home in Denmark, english always felt second nature to me. you earned 1+ subscriber :)

[@TheLyle1997]

do you speak Lojban?

[@Xidnaf]

lyle milan Not really. I know a bit about the grammar and a few words, but not much.

[@TheLyle1997]

how about Esperanto? :D

[@Xidnaf]

lyle milan Languages I know a few words and a bit of grammar of, in decreasing order of how much I know about them: Spanish Arabic Japanese Lojban Latin Esperanto Chinese Think that's about it :)

[@Xidnaf]

***** Crap, sorry, typo. Fixed it!

[@Xidnaf]

***** I am very glad there isn't much text in my videos.

[@ArtaCartii]

Man I love your videos. They re informative and funny without dumbing it down too much. Perfect blend! Thank you kindly for all of your work and time put into this!

[@anihtgenga4096]

Was anybody else expecting India Pale Ale?

[@bcubed72]

Yes. Or Isopropyl alcohol from a chemistry video.

[@helios9445]

I love this! I'm majoring in linguistics at UCLA and am watching your videos instead of writing my phonetics paper haha.

[@theenigmatichaze4782]

6:43 OMG in the closed captions of a 7 year old KZbin video of a dead channel has the wrong form of your!!!!!!!!!

[@ccityplanner1217]

We have the IPA in the Oxford dictionary. I use the IPA to learn the pronunciation of all languages, & have a near-perfect accent for French, German and most other languages I've looked at in detail.

[@IroniqEleganceX]

As usual, entertaining, accurate, and infuriating that you're more successful than me. X( Also, dœs this mean that I have a /ˈsʉw.pɻ̩ʷ.ˌpæw.wɻ̩ʷ/ for having memorized IPA? It's a pretty damn useless superpower, I know, but it feels good to be lord immortal for those precious few seconds. Just curious: any plans on doing something about the Indo-European language family? Given how much of your early stuff is focused on PIE, I'm surprised you haven't done much about it yet. It'd be a pretty interesting topic to cover, could last you a couple videos, and it could give you some opportunity for a little more self-referencing. /wɪn.ˈwɪn/

[@adrin181]

IroniqEleganceX jeez that transcription of "super power" had me reading reeaaalllyyy slowly to make sure it all made sense to me, that is waaaay narrow

[@Uroboro_Djinn]

This is very interesting. It's insane how much all these languages have evolved and changed from PIE that we'd need so many symbols and letters to differentiate each sound...

[@mateszka2003]

I "made" my own IPA-thingy, it's based on english, I'm using it to show people the way how to pronounce my own ConLangs... It's pretty compact. The only weird thing about it is that if you want to write stuff in english, you have to write it the same way as you would normally. Here is an example of a sentence in hungarian (my native language) + my own IPA pronounciation system: English: I went to the store yesterday. Hungarian: Tegnap elmentem a boltba. My own IPA-thingy: [tegnâp elmentem â boltbâ] Ehm... yeah... my example wasn't too good to show y'all this IPA-sh*t... Here is another example: English: I don't like when people hurt me. Hungarian: Nem szeretem ha bántanak. My own IPA-thingy: [nem ser1etem hâ baantânâk] See? There are 3 ways of pronouncing "r": r1, r2, r3 The first one is the one that is used in spanish, hungarian, ... The second one is used in english. The third one is used in German, French, ... Sorry that I wrote too much! :D

[@aqimjulayhi8798]

One of my favorite things about the IPA is the vowel triangle thing that tells you how to place your tongue for vowels. Without it, I had no idea the Turkish dotless ‘i’ was just a ‘u’ without rounding your lips.

[@Kacareek]

Croatian is a phonetic language \o/

[@tylerphotos]

Incredibly well done! And so delightful but also packed with great information!!

[@ellotheearthling]

This video made me realize that capital G is a circular arrow when turned around

[@cattycorner8]

You are the answer to my prayers, the hero of my dreams!

[@ursidae97]

2:18 Cats and dogs living together, MASS HYSTERIA!!!

[@BeneathTheBrightSky]

Xidnaf: And now the IPA has way more sounds than any language could possibly have. Ubykh (I hope I spelled this right): You wanna bet? (At least for consonants)

[@sonyatheforestgaurdian3152]

So what IPA sould I use if I end up trilling a D for a 5th time?

[@leo9463065]

"then learn the symbols for whatever languages you're happen to be interested in at the moment" I'm thinking about Ithkuil. Its consonant inventory have, like, over 40 sounds.

[@Invalid-user13k]

Some of those IPA symbols are sounds so common in English that should be used and some were actually suggested like the ŋ

[@weirdogirl1275]

Yay! I am trying to make my own language and it’s really hard. I did watch some of your other linguistic focused videos, so I’m hoping I’ll remember to look up the ipa chart to help me figure out what sounds my language has. I didn’t even think of this before videos brought it up. I was just putting random sounds together that sounded like they made sense as whatever English word it was replacing. Or I based my sounds off of an existing English word that I came across on a cereal box or something. Or maybe I just made random noises that sounded cool together and made it a word. Don’t ask me why I’m making a language. I don’t know. I’m not writing a story that needs its own language for world-building or anything. The first three words I came up with were the words for “hair” “long” and “short” and I apparently decided to conjugate them for when they are possessive. I do find languages fascinating, but I tend to be lazy and watch other people present all the heavy research yields for me and I just learn from everyone else’s mistakes. Anywho, thanks for making things easy to understand, and that I started in the wrong place building my language.

[@enriqueDFTL]

This channel makes me very interested in Linguistics.

[@DavidHWatson]

You should get into it! It's extremely fascinating!

[@keegster7167]

I only learnt this recently, after actually formally studying linguistics a bit, that [brackets] are phonetic, and so can be both broad and narrow transcription. All it means is how specific you want to be with the pronunciation. It's not even such a divide between broad and narrow. It's more of a sliding scale. I've even seen it used with _less_ specificity than with the phonemic /slashes/. For example, 'bit' will sometimes be spelt [bit], while in slashes, it is always /bɪt/, although this is rare, because it's usually just not useful to do that. It can cause a lot of confusion. /slashes/ are just phonemic, neither broad nor narrow. Just sounds that contrast within a particular language or sounds that are so different in place and manner of articulations that it seems more realistic to analyse them as two phonemes, such as /h/ and /ŋ/.

[@ogieogie]

I'm a linguist, and I certainly never memorized the whole IPA. I keep the IPA handbook nearby so I can look up unfamiliar sounds. Books--amazing!

[@servantofaeie1569]

i memorized almost everything very quickly except clicks and some rare vowels

[@RodrigoTakehara]

I love how you explain things and the video quality is top notch, it being 60 fps is great but could you make them at least 1080p? 4k would be even better, I wanna see those sharp pixels the way its meant to be seen

[@niall5821]

I learnt many IPA symbols right after I discovered them in a English Spanish dictionary

[@dotjretion]

You sir have just earned a subscription. Keep up the good work.

[@gauravghosh3421]

3:24 please tell what is that issue.

[@karthikyadavalli4798]

Hey, i absolutely love these videos that you do. Thanks so much! One quick suggestion, however, could you have the link to your next video stay on for a little longer? Thanks again!

[@TetrixJ]

I clicked on this video expecting to learn about IPA beer.

[@dorukayhanwastaken]

7:28 "Must to pass this know IPA beyond point"

[@commentor5732]

many scripts are pronounced the way they are written - for example Devanagari and Hangul

[@marahaslam5859]

Also, I've always thought of the / / slashes as representing the phonemic level and the [ ] brackets as representing the phonetic level.

[@dv82lecm62]

The IPA is my boy! I lost it when I finally, through study, figured out English always had voiced/voiceless correspondences.

[@josephmcdaniel9644]

I would really enjoy if you could use IPA along with the casual way. It would add to the education I'm getting through these videos and help me to learn IPA as I'm learning about whatever your talking about!

[@jordan11752]

I remember seeing IPA in elementary school grammar lessons but it was never taught to us, it was just silly markings next to the vocab words on the page