Of course, Americans don't need to learn phonetic alphabet, because they understand and speak English from an early age. Moreover, the alphabet is already a phonetic system, and there is no need to make another set of phonetic transcriptions to mix.
Some people say that Chinese learn Hanyu Pinyin, so foreigners should learn phonetic transcription. These people can't tell the difference between language and writing. Only 100 years ago, 99% of people did not go to school, did not learn words, and did not know Hanyu Pinyin, such as people in the world of "Dream of the Red Mansion", who could not understand Chinese? Who doesn't know the pronunciation of Chinese?
Chinese learn English, in fact, most people do not need to learn phonetic alphabet.
As for some people who say that foreigners learn phonics, this is also wrong.
1. Chinese are too confused about English pronunciation.
English is a phonetic language, heavy on hearing, heavy phonetics, complex and changeable, but Chinese have long been accustomed to heavy visual, text-heavy, simple and fixed Chinese, and are at a loss for English phonetics.
Chinese schools only teach English phonetics an International Phonetic Alphabet, and they make a lot of mistakes, and they lack the basic knowledge of phonetic alphabet. Even if the phonetic transcription is taught, it only accounts for 5% of the phonetic weight, and the remaining 95% of the phonetic content that should be learned is not known to everyone.
The vast majority of courses also know only an isolated phonetic alphabet. Phonics tutorials on the Internet, only phonetic transcription lessons are available over and over again. Many people say that Lai Shixiong's American phonetic transcription is very good, but unfortunately, there is still only an isolated phonetic transcription.
As a result, Chinese people generally have no clue about English pronunciation, do not know how much to learn pronunciation, how to learn it, and many people even think that pronunciation is not important and does not need to be learned.
Many people think that just learning a phonetic transcription is "learning phonetics well". Some people use a real dictionary to hear scattered words, but they can't hear them in the sentences. Some people notice sporadic phenomena such as continuous reading, weak reading, and swallowing sounds, and think that they are the most important characteristics, but they do not find other sound changes at all. Some people come up with all kinds of strange theories, such as "continuous reading is the most difficult", "sound change is a special pronunciation", "you need to train your oral muscles", "you need to sharpen your ears", and so on, which are both blind and misleading.
Everyone has a headache about sound and tends to chew on more text. I was forced to listen to the sound hard because of the listening test, but it was only slightly better, and there were still too many troubles that I couldn't hear clearly, couldn't pronounce accurately, spelled incorrectly, and couldn't remember, and we didn't understand the reason, let alone how to solve it.
2. British and Americans do not learn phonetic alphabet, nor do they learn "phonics".
Two or three-year-old children in Britain and the United States have already learned English, and at the age of 6, they have reached the level of the child's mother tongue, and the language level is completed. What you learn in school is not language, but literacy, literature, and knowledge. Going to school is the mother tongue level of elementary school students, middle school students, and college students. Not going to school is the level of the illiterate mother tongue.
English writing is very simple, and American elementary school students only need to learn a little bit of simple combinations of words to associate sounds with words and start reading. The more you read, the more words you recognize.
This ability that could have been understood and applied only with a slight association with the text is called phonics, and its correct meaning is "reading the pronunciation of characters", which is the same thing as Chinese people can read the pronunciation of Chinese characters by looking at Hanyu Pinyin. Such a simple phonics has been mistakenly translated by some people as the American "phonics" method, and has ulterior motives to advertise how miraculous it is, specifically to deceive people.
3. Why do Chinese learn phonetic transcription?
The difference between Chinese pronunciation and English pronunciation can be compared with calligraphy.
Chinese takes Mandarin as an example, which is simple and clear, one word and one sound, and the Chinese characters are always fixed in pronunciation, and the whole is as upright and clear as Kaishu. English is complex and ambiguous, with multiple words and a wide range of conjugations. How widespread are the sound changes? Phonetic transcription often has a sound change in words, words in a wider range of sound changes in sentences, and the whole has been softened and adjusted smoothly, speaking quickly and vaguely, and the rules are tolerant, everyone can speak differently, all are considered to be standard, as a result, 90% of the words in the sentence are not independent pronunciation in the dictionary. The whole is like cursive writing, staggering, flying dragons and snakes, and ever-changing.
Chinese people have long been accustomed to Chinese in Kaishu, and it is difficult to hear and accurate cursive English, forming a firewall rejection reaction of the mother tongue.
If you want to learn cursive well, you must first learn the strokes of Chinese characters, learn to write each character, and then learn cursive techniques, and figure out each tick and every drawing in order to identify a variety of personalized cursive works. If Chinese want to fully hear English, they must learn a complete pronunciation course, including phonetic basics Phonetic transcription Word letter structure Correspondence between the letter string of words and phonetic transcription Sentence phonetic change rules Listening training Pronunciation training is so much that the ins and outs of each sound particle are clear. Think about Mandarin is the mother tongue that Chinese have long been familiar with, simple and clear, and most people have to go through a year or two of special training, English pronunciation is ten times more complex, varied, completely unfamiliar, even can not hear clearly, more difficult to accurate, that requires special training.
Due to the native language firewall, even if there is a phonetic system such as letters, they still do not know how to understand English phonetics, and they need to start learning from a deeper phonetic alphabet level, so Chinese need to learn phonetic transcription.
But it's useless to just learn an isolated phonetic transcription, you have to learn a complete phonetic course to be effective. This complete pronunciation course is dedicated to training, which was originally the school's teaching task, but the school has not completed anything, so everyone has to explore it by themselves.
4. Only a few Chinese want to learn phonetic transcription
However, the full pronunciation course is only for a small number of people who want to fully practice their pronunciation skills, or who want to learn English to their native level. Most Chinese don't need to learn.
For example, myself, because of my good pronunciation foundation, I only watched British and American dramas, and my English level was as fast as that of British and American children**, and in just a few years, I reached the level of my native English language, and I can fully understand and understand most British and American dramas, and my pronunciation is standard and pure American English, which is exactly the same as a native speaker. Able to listen to and write words, see words and pronounce words, and there is no need to memorize strings of letters at all. If you dictate, you can write exactly right by listening to fast, vague, long and difficult sentences, and you can listen to a large paragraph and then write it together.
Most Chinese just want to "learn" English, do not pursue the level of native English, and do not need to have multiple standards of pronunciation. In fact, the vast majority of Chinese do not even dare to dream of the level of their mother tongue, but only seek the daily level, the half-hanging level, and even be satisfied with the exam, life and work, then the requirements for pronunciation ability are very low, and it is enough to be able to hear the listening test questions clearly and pronounce a little English taste. For such a goal, you don't need to learn a complete phonetic course, nor do you need to learn phonetic transcription, you just need to listen and read along.
Therefore, the correct attitude of the Chinese towards phonetics is: either learn the complete phonetic course, or don't even learn phonetic transcription. Isolated phonetic transcription content in school textbooks is redundant.
* Self-colorful English.
Original author: liston