ˈgʊd ˈnjuːz ˈevriwʌn

Ever since I started learning foreign languages, typing foreign characters and phonetic symbols has been a problem. When learning German, I had a problem with ä, ö, ü and ß; with English, an even bigger problem with IPA phonetic symbols. In order to use phonetic transcriptions in my SuperMemo collection in DOS, I had to design my own IPA screen font.

Today, of course, we have Unicode and the problem is largely solved on the fonts side: if you use a popular font, you can be sure it will include characters for practically all languages. Even more amazingly, all modern operating systems have at least one good font with a full set of IPA symbols.

But there is also the keyboard side. The characters are available, all right, but typing them comfortably is another matter.

Here’s what I think a good foreign-character- and phonetic-symbol-typing solution should be like:

• Seamless.It shouldn’t make your keyboard behave in an unexpected way. It should give you new characters but not at the cost of existing characters. Users should not be expected to unlearn old habits. (For example, the US-International layout turns the apostrophe and quote into accent keys, so the apostrophe and quote are hard to type.)
• Intuitive.Users shouldn’t be required to memorize a lot of shortcuts. It should be easy to guess how to type a given character. (For example, Alt+E for é is easy to guess; } for é is not easy to guess.)
• Efficient. It should be possible to type characters at a good rate.

Several years ago, I made TypeIt, a Web solution which scores pretty high on all three goals. However, it requires you to switch to a browser window, type up your text, select it, copy it, switch back to your target window, and paste the text where you want it. That’s 5 extra steps every time you want to type foreign characters or IPA symbols. If you are regularly using/learning a foreign language, this routine will quickly get on your nerves.

Enter my new baby – the TypeIt App for Windows, which is a neat little app that gives you all the TypeIt goodness without the badness:

• Type foreign characters and IPA symbols directly into your SRS (Anki, SuperMemo etc.), email, word processor, discussion forums, Facebook, etc. ˈdʒʌst laɪk ˈðæt! (I just typed that using my app.) It’s a whole different experience.
• Intuitive keyboard shortcuts you know and love. Examples for IPA: Hold Alt and press O to type ɔ; press O again to get ɒ. Hold Alt and press E to get ə. And so on. (It uses the same shortcuts as TypeIt.org, only with Alt instead of Ctrl.)
• Seamless operation without surprises. Doesn’t interfere with punctuation keys.
• Fast, lightweight app. Installs in seconds. Just works.

In short, the TypeIt app is the easiest and fastest way to type foreign characters and IPA symbols on a PC.

The TypeIt App costs $17.50 for the Extended Edition (for phonetics professionals and enthusiasts) and $12.50 for the Standard Edition (for everyone). That’s for a lifetime license, good for up to 3 computers in a household.

So if you’re learning a language with à’s, ê’s or ü’s, or you are learning/teaching English and use IPA-based transcriptions, check out the TypeIt app. It will make your life a lot easier.

P.S. There’s a 30-day money-back warranty, so you can always change your mind.

Of course, the first thing you should do after installing the LDOCE is download Taku Fukada’s unbelievable LDOCE5 Viewer which will turn your LDOCE from mediocre to amazing.

If you also need the book version for some reason, The Book Depository has the paperback+DVD for about $44 (free worldwide delivery). Amazon.co.uk has it for £23.79 (about $37) but delivery is not free, so it would probably end up costing more. (However, Amazon.co.uk has free delivery to some European countries if your order comes to more than £25, so you could order something else in addition to the LDOCE in order to qualify for free shipping.)

Thanks to commenter “michau” for the tip about The Book Depository.

To describe RP pronunciations of words, dictionaries use a transcription system based on symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The system was developed by Daniel Jones in the early 20^th century; the last significant change to this system occurred in 1967 when A. C. Gimson took on the job of editor of the English Pronouncing Dictionary.

Did you catch that date – 1967? That’s 46 years ago. But accents evolve all the time. The British upper classes speak differently than they did in the 1960s. Yet the transcription system has remained virtually unchanged.

Many people have noticed problems with the prevalent system of British transcriptions. For example, it only takes a brief encounter with an audio IPA chart to realize that bed should be transcribed with /ɛ/, not /e/, hot with /ɔ/, not /ɒ/, or four with /oː/, not /ɔː/.

Geoff Lindsey (UCLA linguist and accent coach) has not only noticed these issues – he has proposed a revolutionary (and in this case, the word revolutionary really applies) new transcription system for “modern RP” or, as he calls it, “Standard British”. His blog post presents a wonderfully comprehensive discussion (with lots of audio examples!) of what has changed in RP over the years, as well as ideas on how these changes should be reflected in dictionary transcriptions.

While I feel that some of Lindsey’s suggestions go a bit too far (one example is replacing /uː/ with /ɵw/), his discussion (and, indeed, all of his blog) is a must-read for anyone interested in British pronunciation.

P.S. Listen to this recording of Princess (now Queen) Elizabeth from 1940 to hear “classic” RP – the model that is codified in dictionaries to this day. Yes, it sounds beautiful, but it’s also very old-fashioned. Nobody speaks like this today (not even Prince William).

Of course, I know that it’s hard to start learning English every day. To pull it off, you have to get pretty excited about English – more excited than you are about other things you do, like checking Facebook 50 times a day. Still, sometimes we need a nudge in the right direction; a daily reminder can also help you stay on track.

(Note: The report includes only visitors who declared that they are not native speakers of English. Repeated attempts were excluded, i.e. only the first attempt was taken into account. There were about 14,000 unique responses from non-native speakers.)

Overall scores

First let’s look at the overall scores:

The mean (average) score was 6.19 out of 10. As you can see from the above chart, only about 3% of visitors got a perfect score. 58% got 6 points or less.

Is that good or bad? To answer this question, I bought some bananas, went to the Wroclaw zoo and ran the test on a group of monkeys. Here are the monkeys’ results:

As the monkeys have no conception of English pronunciation, they were choosing their answers at random. Since each question had only two possible answers, the chance of guessing the correct answer is 50%. So, in a 10-question test, the mean score was 5 points.

As you can see, the Antimoon visitors were better than monkeys, but not by much (mean score of 6.19 versus 5.00).

Which questions were the most difficult?

Let’s now take a look at the individual questions. What percentage of visitors answered each question correctly?

As you see, there was significant variation in difficulty between questions. The easiest questions were answered correctly by 80% of visitors; the hardest ones were answered correctly by only 40% of visitors.

Interestingly, for the most difficult questions (“Does food rhyme with good?” and “Does of have an f sound or a v sound?”), non-natives did worse than monkeys (who of course got 50% correct answers on every question). If our visitors had simply rolled a dice on these questions, they would have gotten them right 50% of the time – instead, they got them right only about 40% of the time.

This shows that, for the food/good and roll/role questions, visitors were not simply making random guesses. The problem wasn’t lack of knowledge – the problem was bad knowledge.

Note: As of Dec 31, 2012, Test Your Pronunciation has been modified, so you can no longer take the test in the form described above.

So, I’ve decided to publish his short report. Hopefully, I’ll be able to publish some other learner feedback that has been lying around in my e-mail archive. Anyway, here’s the report:

Learner reports: Arkadiusz K.

I’ve started learning English with the Antimoon Method. After a very short time (just two months), I can already see considerable progress, which motivates me to keep working. I have a question about input. I use various sources: some of them American (mostly cartoons and TV series), some of them British (podcasts, radio). Can mixing two different kinds of English be harmful? Should I concentrate on just one dialect of English?

The only risk I can see is that you could pick up a “mid Atlantic” accent (a mixture of British and American pronunciation). This shouldn’t be a problem in any serious sense of the word, but if you’re interested in having a pure RP or GenAm accent, you should learn about the differences between British and American pronunciation (individual sounds and word pronunciations) and pay attention to those differences as you listen to content. This should help your brain keep the two pronunciation models separate.