My way to teach yourself to pronounce all sounds

[Karutoshika]

Hi everyone ^_^

I don't know why I didn't think of that before, but here it is. My way to train yourself to pronounce all sounds.
Obviously by all I don't mean "all", but quite a lot

To prove that it works - I can pronounce almost any sound from ipa table (expect few odd clicks and lip flaps) and I'm quite proud of it

Okay. First for vowels. As you know there are certain characteristics to a vowel. Some of them are roundness, height, backness, etc. So, let's say there are 5 levels of highness, 3 levels of roundness and 3 levels of backness. As an example. Now you have 5*3*3 possible combinations for vowels. So, what you do - pronounce all of them alternating in order between all possible combinations of these characteristics. Once you have the hang of it for this basic system you can add other characteristics like nasalization, aspiration, tenseness, etc. One by one. This way you will get almost hundred possible vowels. Obviously not all goes together, but I think you get the idea.
It's not difficult!

Similar stuff for consonant, but more complex because you can't alternate the same way as with vowels. If you find this stuff useful I can explain for consonants too.

If you think it is stupid, well, it's your opinion, but feel free to express it. But this stuff helped me quite a lot to understand relationship between different sound characteristics.

[Xephyr]

Which clicks are you having trouble with?

[sucaeyl]

How do I pronounce epiglottals?

[Aurora Rossa]

How do I pronounce epiglottals?

My question as well. I have never been able to figure those out.

[Tropylium]

The hardest thing with epiglottals is surely distinguishing them from pharyngeals. Three facts that help here are that stops and trills are only possible as epiglottal, and they can be pronounced independantly of tongue position. If you try to pronounce something guttural with your tongue in position for eg. , chances are you'll get an epiglottal first (something like an epiglottalized glottal stop is also possible in place of the stop, but you probably should aim for a good grasp of regular glottals before going for the other gutturals).

Regular pharyngeals, in turn, may be best practiced by deriving them from RTR vowel pronunciation (which is, AFAIK, the same thing as pharyngealization)...

[Karutoshika]

Which clicks are you having trouble with?

Bilabial ejective, velar ejective, uvular ejective, alveolar lateral ejective affricate. But I didn't really practice them, so maybe they are not that hard aftaral
Oh, and I have trouble with labial-velar nasal.

How do I pronounce epiglottals?

I can't tell you how to pronounce particular sound. I just made a system that lets you learn the whole ipa table easily, and to understand how each sound is different from another, so you can pronounce most of them easily in the end.

Ok, for consonants you just open this table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa and start somewhere where you feel most comfortable (from the point of you native language), let's say with stops. So you take the stops row and start going back and forth between all sounds in that row. When you are done switch to column, let's say bilabial and go up and down in that column, and continue for all possible rows and columns until you mastered the whole main ipa table. Even if you think that you know perfectly clear all or most sounds you will still be surprised how much more stuff you can learn if you do that methodically! When you done with that table move to n*on-pulmonic consonants. These quite hard, at least for me Then clicks... etc. But basically the same system. Just go back and forth between all possible combinations.

[Xephyr]

Which clicks are you having trouble with?

Bilabial ejective, velar ejective, uvular ejective, alveolar lateral ejective affricate. But I didn't really practice them, so maybe they are not that hard aftaral
Oh, and I have trouble with labial-velar nasal.

Those aren't clicks, they're ejectives. Clicks are different. Well ok, there are such things as a bilabial ejective click and an alveolar lateral ejective affricate click, but from the looks of it I'm guessing you're not talking about those...

Try saying /p/, /k/, /q/, or /tɬ/ while holding your breath.

[Chagen]

I've noticed that english voiceless stops tend to be pronounced allophonically as ejectives when highly emphasized. That's how I learned to do them.

[Wattmann]

I've noticed that english voiceless stops tend to be pronounced allophonically as ejectives when highly emphasized. That's how I learned to do them.

Uh, are we speaking the same English?
Give examples.

[Travis B.]

I've noticed that english voiceless stops tend to be pronounced allophonically as ejectives when highly emphasized. That's how I learned to do them.

Uh, are we speaking the same English?
Give examples.

Any final fortis plosive in English will be articulated as an ejective when strongly emphasized.

[Wattmann]

I've noticed that english voiceless stops tend to be pronounced allophonically as ejectives when highly emphasized. That's how I learned to do them.

Uh, are we speaking the same English?
Give examples.

Any final fortis plosive in English will be articulated as an ejective when strongly emphasized.

Never noticed that one

[Travis B.]

I've noticed that english voiceless stops tend to be pronounced allophonically as ejectives when highly emphasized. That's how I learned to do them.

Uh, are we speaking the same English?
Give examples.

Any final fortis plosive in English will be articulated as an ejective when strongly emphasized.

Never noticed that one

Now that I notice it, at least for me I also can when said final fortis plosive is followed by a sibilant.

[finlay]

I've noticed that english voiceless stops tend to be pronounced allophonically as ejectives when highly emphasized. That's how I learned to do them.

Uh, are we speaking the same English?
Give examples.

Any final fortis plosive in English will be articulated as an ejective when strongly emphasized.

Never noticed that one

Never watched The Weakest Link?

bæŋk’ !!

[Melteor]

How do you guys figure out vowels? I try to listen to wiki for pure vowels, and I do practice the tables and adding and subtracting features, but when it comes to producing unusual vowels that are variations on my English ones I have a real hard time. Most of my English vowels are confusing as is, so I try to find similarities to British and Aussie accents...Though the British ones seem to be more influenced by fashion, and feel over-enunciated a lot of the time.

So I have a large variety of peculiar vowels I know I can produce without much recourse for founding out what they are.