Video Transcription

Advanced Phonetic Spellings

Distinguishing Phonemes

A phoneme is a discrete unit of sound. One of the things we can do to tell when one phoneme ends and another begins is to pronounce words slowly and feel your mouth move. For instance, when you pronounce a word and your tongue is at the top of your mouth and then it moves to the bottom of your mouth, you're switching between phonemes.

Remember, phonemes are sounds, not letters. For instance, when pronouncing "tomato":

I say "T AX M EY T OW"

You say "T AX M AA T OW"

Consonants generally reflect the way they're written more than vowels, but there are some exceptions. For instance, "butter":

B AH DX AXR, not B AH T AXR

Transcribing Phonemes

• Use phoneme lists
  • Engine help document
• Use the Phonetic Speller
  • Look up a word that rhymes with it
• Pronounce your phonetic spellings without reference to the original word
• Experiment

Alternative Pronunciations

• Great for names which are often mispronounced
• Use for troubleshooting other problems, e.g. sounds being cut off
• Use for different accents / dialects

Next, we're going to look at adding foreign words to your applications.