Does anyone have any info on why Taiwan uses KK, instead of IPA?
Are there any other countries that use KK?
What are the advantages or disadvantages of KK, or is it all the same?
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Good question.
One thing that I can say, not to put a bee in anyoneâs bonnet, but the reason that Taiwanese speak English with a Yankee accent is that they learn KK here in school and that phonetic system is based on American pronunciation.
So the next time there is some debate about the Queenâs English and American English in Taiwan, remember, itâs not the fault of the kids here; this is just the way it has been taught to them.
Hey, John, you beat me to it. I have tried to teach English pronunciation with the KK system and immediately realised that the system is lousy. The disadvantages relative to the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) are that:
- [*]Dipthongs are represented by single characters, so you can't readily tell which symbols represent dipthongs and which represent single vowels.[*]There was another reason but I've forgotten it all of a sudden.[*]Oh, yes, I remember now - Long and short vowels are also represented by different symbols instead of the same symbol with or without a colon. With the IPA it's simple - Colon - long, no colon - short. With the KK system you just have to remember which is which, and of course most students don't.[/list]
Anyway, Iâm sure the reason why the KK system was adopted was that the IPA spelling that Taiwnese students saw in their textbooks represented British received pronunciation*, which was not what people where hearing from their mostly North American teachers. That could be confusing. So someone had the bright idea of inventing a different system to represent American pronunciation, which was completely unnecessary, because American pronunciation can be represented perfectly adequately by the IPAâŚbecause it is what it says - international!
My native English pronunciation is British received pronunciation* with an optional Cockney/Estuary English variant. However, I have always given my students the option of learning American pronunciation. In mainland China they use the IPA. When I was teaching in a hotel in Beijing, I would tell the students what words were pronounced differently in British and American English, and write both pronunciations on the whiteboard using the IPA.
There is no need for KK at all. If you analyse your Taiwanese studentsâ pronunciation problems, you will realise that they are due in no small part to the inadequacies of the KK system. I say dump it along with Wade Giles and so-called âtongyong pinyin.â
*By the way, Wolf, we donât say âQueenâsâ or âKingâs Englishâ any more, because it sounds too feudalistic/imperialistic and not in keeping with the international nature of English today. These days we call it âreceived pronunciationâ or RP, meaning that it is the standard âreceivedâ from our teachers and broadcast media.
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First I heard. Who told you?
quote[quote]*By the way, Wolf, we don't say "Queen's" or "King's English" any more, because it sounds too feudalistic/imperialistic and not in keeping with the international nature of English today. These days we call it "received pronunciation" or RP, meaning that it is the standard "received" from our teachers and broadcast media. [/quote]
Thanks for that great reply Juba.
So does this mean that prior to the implementation of KK students were reading BE (RP) with IPA, but hearing AE from their teachers?
If that is the case I wonder why they did not switch to AE dictionaries using IPA.
I found that Kenyon and Knott have a 1995 Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, which uses IPA
I also found this link which mentions some of the differences between KK and IPA,however the author refers to the use of KK in Taiwan as:
ââŚmostly an advantage, since this system is based on and very close to the IPA International Phonetic Association/Alphabet ĺééłć¨ system.â ??
Further I came accross this link:
ââŚboth the Kenyon and Knott Phonetic Alphabet (K.K.) and the International Phonetic Alphabet (D.J.)â
and I now wonder why, in Taiwan, IPA is called DJ?
Juba, would you mind going a bit more in-depth on
quote[quote]If you analyse your Taiwanese students' pronunciation problems, you will realise that they are due in no small part to the inadequacies of the KK system [/quote]
Poor old Amos. I see you come from Australia. I guess you are a little behind the latest cultural developments in the mother country. Or maybe you just hanker after our monarch a bit more than we Poms do. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, after all.
[Moderatorâs note: image changed to link]
quote:
Originally posted by Juba: My native English pronunciation is British received pronunciation* with an optional Cockney/Estuary English variant.
Hey Juba, I used to be a groupie for Dr. Feelgood. Youâre not from Canvey Island are you?
I would say itâs because of the previous US presence in Taiwan. Hence the use of KK. Having lived in the US and Taiwan for about equal amounts of time, this is actually the first time Iâve heard of IPA.
quote:
Originally posted by answerer: I would say it's because of the previous US presence in Taiwan. Hence the use of KK. Having lived in the US and Taiwan for about equal amounts of time, this is actually the first time I've heard of IPA.
I never heard of KK until I came to TaiwanâŚand I have yet to meet an American who is familiar with it. In the US we use Websterâs pronunication system. Sometimes I think they use KK here in order to keep out foreign dictionariesâŚafterall, students will buy only KK books if thatâs all they are tested on or taught.
You know, I really hate politically correct changes in the language. But if you want to sound like a cone-head, be my guest.
Politically correct changes? Its been called that since the earliest days of Auntie Beeb. So theah. End thetâs the end of the nyoos>
quote:
Originally posted by sandman: Politically correct changes? Its been called that since the earliest days of Auntie Beeb.
English history lesson:
So? I didnât say it WASNâT called RP prior to the days of the Beeb. Thankâs for the link though (even though I knew it all before)
quote:
Originally posted by sandman: So? I didn't say it WASN'T called RP prior to the days of the Beeb. Thank's for the link though (even though I knew it all before) [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img] [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img] [img]images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]
No criticism either implied or inferredâŚI was agreeing with you :^)
I really hate KK too.
I tried to learn it (well started anyway), but I think itâs rubbish. You have one symbol trying to cover a range of sounds that are really quite different even when pronounced by Americans. Who pronounces the a from father the same as the o from coffee and the a from walk.
My Oxford English-Chinese dictionary shows both the British and American pronounciations in KK, but it still seems weird.
I really think a lot of Chinese here pronounce English wiht an accent thatâs somehow even more âAmericanâ than any Americans Iâ
ve heard (even on the movies). Itâs really like a caricature of an American accent. Obviously Iâm not American, but how does it sound to Americans.
Now I recognise this not as an American accent but a âKKâ accent and I can often tell when someone has learnt with KK. I sometimes ask.
Finally I think reliance on a phonetic system isan impediment to learning to read. Just as pinyin or bopomofo will help you pronounce Chinese but not help you learn characters, KK will not help you learn to read. I try and teach my students on the one hand the ârulesâ of pronounciation (what seems to get called ânatural readingâ) and on the other hand to memorise the pronounciation of a word as a whole.
As an aside on the ânatural readingâ, there may be a bit of a move away from KK at the moment, as my girlfriend has told me there are some popular books teaching ânatural readingâ that purport to tell you all the ârules of English pronounciationâ so you can pronounce any English word without KK. Obviously these books a lying a little, I think. IE how would âreadâ be pronounced according to these rules?
Lastly, anyone know a website about the ârules of pronounciationâ (for teachers not linguists)?
Bri
But is this also an impediment from the point of view of an EFL student?
English is a confusing language, and it is not a 100% phonetic language.
Take for example
/o/ boat, sew, so
Is it possible for an EFL student using phonic rules to pronounce the âeâ in âsewâ as
/E/ egg, elephant, effort ?
Unless there is a phonic rule about âewâ being pronounced as /o/ ?
According to Ed Sanders table of substitutes ew = u as in new
By the way I believe that the vowel combination âeaâ = long e
My point is that either way student would have to learn an enormous amount of rules (Ed Sanders page will show you how many), and even then the student could still have problems.
But will you be able to teach your students the pronunciation of all the words they will need to use?
Donât get me wrong, I do exactly the same thing, I believe that a solid base in phonetic reading ability is essential for the efl studen.
But at some stage the students will need to deal with pronunciation on their own, and at this stage the IPA system would have to come into use.
www.lsilver.net
Note how in this website AE vowels are represented using IPA: /a/ = bother, hot, mama
To answer my own question
quote:
Further I came accross this link: "...both the Kenyon and Knott Phonetic Alphabet (K.K.) and the International Phonetic Alphabet (D.J.)" and I now wonder why, in Taiwan, IPA is called DJ?
I have found that DJ refers to:
[i]Jones, Daniel (1881 - 1967) British linguist and phonetician.
From 1907 he developed the recently invented International Phonetic Alphabet at the first British department of phonetics, at University College, London. He went on to invent a system of cardinal vowels, used as reference points for transcribing all vowel sounds. In his English Pronouncing Dictionary (1917), he described the influential system of received pronunciation, the English spoken by BBC newsreaders. [/i]
However, I donât understand why IPA is in this instance refered to as DJ. Considering that IPA is now used to transcribe many languages, including AE
I also emailed my question about KK to a lecturer at Taiwan Normal University, she very gracefuly gave me a detailed reply, some of the interesting things she mentioned are:
quote:
standard British pronunciation used to be taught in Taiwan schools, using the Daniel Jones 'DJ' phonetic symbols. At some point (I don't know which year) everyone was officially changed over to American pronunciation and KK. I'm not so sure why KK was picked over IPA, but there is a general perception that IPA = DJ, and that DJ is only suitable for describing the sounds of British English.
Interesting about the idea that IPA=DJ.
If you followed my previous link about Daniel Jones, and then clicked through some more links, you would have found that DJ was used to transcribe RP. Fom what I have read this was then added to IPA ( I hope I have understood this part right), which was first developed in the late 1800s in France, for the teaching of English.
quote:
The use of KK has been both good and bad. The good is that lots of students have a pretty good start in using the IPA to indicate pronunciation, since KK is very similar to IPA. The bad is that the teachers teaching it mostly have poor pronciation to start out with, and KK reinforces some bad tendencies, like the diphthong problem you mention, also final [I] as in 'happy'. Another disadvantage is that many students never pick up what KK is all about, and end up having to memorize two spellings by rote for every word assigned instead of a spelling and something to help with pronunciation. Honestly, though, the biggest problem is in my view with poor trained and prepared teachers, and less with KK.
Another good point, the school I work at for example has organised KK classes in the past, taught only by the Taiwanese teachers. This makes sense in a way, how many foreign teachers could teach KK? Or would be willing to learn it in order to teach it?
In fact, how many teachers are in fact even aware of the explicit phonic rules. As native speakers we have of course an implicit knowledge, but I assume that most of us in the age range of 20 to 40 were taught reading using the âWhole languageâ ((top-down) approach. Unlike our grandparents who were taught with the âphonicsâ method (bottom-up).
This is now changing again, as more of the so called experts are becoming aware of the increasingly poor levels of literacy in students, we are (in New Zealand anyway) moving on to a combination of the two. âPhonicsâ for spelling, and âwhole languageâ for understanding.
Thanks for the links.
Iâm not disputing that a phonetic system can be useful. I just think that reliance on it will be bad for your reading. I mean reading, ratehr than pronounciation.
So, Iâm not sure, but it does make me think that the worth of KK may be outweighed by the effort and the bad side-effects. If I was advising a friend or student Iâd tell them to try and do without it.
Bri
Bu Lai En - I could not agree more - teaching kids to read any phonetic language for English is simply crazy:
They have enough to learn anyway - just let them learn to speak and learn what the words look like. Sure some of them do not have the same sounds.
They are learning their own language where the look of the words has little to do with the pronunciation.