Learning Method: IPA Dephonetisation & Asphonetisation

IPA made easy

(Lucky I still have something I wrote before the Easter Holidays. This is it!)

There is a saying, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap". This is all so true for everything you do in life, no matter you are trying to cook a delicious meal or learn up new vocabulary.

Luckily, there are sometimes short-cuts to learn something and I'm going to share with you my secrets of learning IPA.

Some of you might have heard me teaching this in the class already, but I would like to share with everybody here again, just in case I missed talking about it in class (so ask more questions and you will learn more).

The steps of learning IPA are actually pretty simple.

First, you need to learn how to write the alphabets.

Then, you need to remember one most simple example.

Eg. 'at' /æt/ and 'up' /ʌp/

Next, all you need to do is to apply a method that I invented, called 'Method of Dephonetisation', and that is simply to delete the non-relevant sound from the word and you will get the sound of the IPA.

The advantage of this method is, you don't need to remember the sounds of each IPA by itself, but you have a better reference from an example.

Since you can dephonetise a word, you can of course asphonetise it to form a larger word using 'Method of Asphonetisation'.

Many learners in Hong Kong can't say the word 'cat' properly. Now with the method of phonetisation, from 'at' to 'cat', all you need to do is to add a /k/ sound in front, thus /kæt/.

Now, let's try some examples:

What is the difference between 'bread' and 'brad'?

Bread /bred/ Brad /bræd/

Now, how do we pronounce them? For 'bread', because we can see the IPA /bred/ having 'red' /red/ inside, so all we need to do is /b/ + /red/.

For 'Brad', because the IPA /bræd/ has 'rad' /ræd/ inside, so all we need to do is /b/ + /ræd/.

If you are not comfortable with 'rad', you can trying the following step by step:

1. start with 'at' /æt/, dephonetise /t/ => /æ/
2. asphonetise /æ/ + /d/ => /æd/
   
3. asphonetise /r/ + /æd/ => /ræd/
   
4. asphonetise /b/ + /ræd/ => /bræd/
   

You can use these methods and expand to long words and still get perfect pronunciations. The key is just not to lose your sound in every step.

Enjoy your IPA!

To type IPA on your websites:

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/ipachart.html

Coming soon: ...... Wait until I recover first......

Reply to comments & readers:

1. Thanks for all your caring messages!

Message: Absent from work one more day

Today, I went to see a Chinese physician in Tai Wo and he helped me twisted my skull back in place, after he twisted 6 times, I am practically pain-freed. Now, I still feel a bit of pain in the neck and I can't do any large movements yet, including walking a little faster, so I guess I will have to take one more day rest in bed.

So, sorry to both my Thursday and Friday classes. I'll be back next week.

Thanks for your care and concerns!

Hope you are still learning English at home without me.

Message: Absent from work

Dear all,

I will be absent tonight because I am suffering from a serious neck+back injury. So sorry for that. I tried to teach yesterday but it got very serious.

Should be able to see you next week.

If Prime doesn't call you, then there will be a supply teacher.

Cheers!
Locky

Movie: Departures (Okuribito)

I guess you can easily find much better review of this movie than the one you are reading now, but I do think it is worth to make a few comments using my own words. Don’t worry, there will be no spoiler.

For those of you who have seen some trailers of this movie, you know it is a story about a Japanese cellist who lost his job after the orchestra disbanded, and you know he eventually got a job and became an undertaker, or mortician in the States.

But what I actually want to say is how much appreciation I have for the undertakers after watching this movie. I had always thought that undertakers are for people who have weird interests, or are only taken up by those who find no other jobs to do. After watching this movie, I have totally changed my perception for this. Undertakers are one of the most courage-testing jobs in the world and they can too be highly respected like fire fighters.

I enjoyed the fun and joyful atmosphere that the movie began with, totally unlike what I have first expected of this movie – to be gloomy, grey and sorrowful. Masahiro Motoki’s character of Daigo, looked puzzled, confused and innocent most of the time but carried quite a bit of cuteness (according to my girlfriend) and lots of his moral perseverance (according to myself).

My second favourite character is Tsutomu Yamazaki’s Ikuei Sasaki, the owner of the undertaker company. He kept his cool at all time, and like most Japanese movies, he is an aged yet deep and experienced figure, who is most likely to be elusive and unreachable at first, but later found to be extremely enlightening and incredibly understanding. Although this I had expected, I wasn’t bored by yet another spiritual leader as such.

Finally, apart from the simple yet great storyline, I was deeply immersed into the movie by the music in this movie. Particularly, the theme song “Memory” by Joe Hisaishi 久石 譲 . I did a little search on the internet, and immediately understand why he is the best you can get – even Hayao Miyazaki 宮﨑 駿is a big fan of him and used his music in so many of his animes! Including the latest "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea 崖の上のポニョ"

Comparing with Slumdog Millionaire, I will choose this one. Definitely a movie to watch again and again!

Music on Youtube:

Official English Website:

http://www.departures-themovie.com/

Investment: Say “Hi” to Mr. Market

Do you know how to predict the future? I don’t. If I knew, I would have sold some stocks one day before the 30^th March, and bought some back before the market closed on the 30^th March. Why particularly this day?

The answer is obvious, Adam Cheng Effect / Ding Hai Effect. The King of Snooker premiere led to the fall of 4.70% in the market.

Can we explain why market goes up and down? Reporters in the evening news are always able to do so, and I do believe that there is some truth to their explanations, but most of the time, there isn’t really a reason. In fact, there is no need for one.

Say you walk down a street one day and see a stranger. Since you do not know him, you have no opinions or feelings towards him. However, the stranger sees you and gives you a big smile. Now, the question is, what is the reason he smiles at you? He likes you? Maybe. He wants to show you politeness? Perhaps. You look funny? Not for sure. Nonetheless, maybe he did so without having any reasons.

Another scenario is for the guys, how often have you seen your girlfriend suddenly in a good mood, but swung to nightmare in just a short moment? I have. Have you then asked why she changed so quickly? What will they tell you? Must there be a reason? Verbally, no; scientifically, yes. It is well-known that people’s moods are controlled by our brain and the messages are delivered by electric pulses and hormones. (Well, I’m not going to get too scientific here, don’t worry.)

Warren Buffett’s teacher, renowned Value-investor Benjamin Graham’s allegorical portrait of the stock market as Mr. Market [1], who in my rephrasing, is willing to buy your stocks every day at price he likes. The quotes he offers might be a worthy or super ridiculous, but you can feel free to take advantage of him or ignore him.

Mr. Market’s moodiness reflects the mood swings of the markets, and thus the irrationality of the human psychology. So by theory, if someone can catch the movement of this irrationality, then he will be rich! But is there any regularity in this irrationality?

Warren Buffett said that, “If a business does well, the stock eventually follows”, so if this stands, the regularity is found. In fact, he ignores the fluctuations of the market (the mood swings), and takes a more relaxing method and waits for the stocks to eventually go up, that is of course, if you are willing to wait. Well, whether it really is a good idea or not, it made him one of the richest guys in the world, and he is for sure a great teacher of everyone (He’s mine too).

But does that mean speculation cannot earn a big fortune? Then I really don’t know how people explain the case of Mr. George Soros. I haven’t read much about Mr. Soros, so I am not going to say more, but my belief is that every method has pros and cons, and timing is exceptionally crucial in investment. Wrong timing can kill.

But then how do we know when is the good time? Is now a good time? Well, with the Hang Seng Index (HIS) at 14998.04 (at the time of writing this article, 6^th April 2009, market closed), I personally feel scared to buy in now because from 10917.65 on 17^th May 2004, took 301 trading days to break 15000 on 2^nd August 2005, but the recent two times of breaking 15000 from similar lows, from the lowest 10676.29 on 27^th October 2008 took 7 trading days to break 15000, and from the lowest of 11344.58 on 9^th March 2009 took 20 trading days to break 15000 once more. (For your interest, the 7 days to break 15000 took 13 trading days to reach a so-called low point 11814.81)

Where is the rationality this time?

Although history doesn’t guarantee the future and some might say history never repeats the same way, the odds of earning more is just not so great. With not just one market (the HSI) is going up and down by large amount, but the whole world’s markets going up and down at the same time, you know this is not something anyone can predict. Why not? Well, obviously, there must be a group of people so rich and so concurrent in their buying and selling, that they controlled the movement of the markets in the world. To me, this group of people seems like just one person and indeed, it does seem like it is really Mr. Market in action. How can you predict if he will be spending more money in buying something in one day or another?

Guess what, I can! Your chance is 50-50.

Pictures:

http://investing-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/benjamin-graham.jpg

http://img.ent.tom.com/uimg/2007/7/31/taixinhua/1185852886507_40669.jpg

Citation:

[1]: The Intelligent Investor Revised addition p204-p205 ISBN: 0-06-055566-1

Coming soon: Review of the Japanese movie "Departure" because it has been postponed.

Reply to comments & readers:

1. Question time, how many times has Adam Cheng Effect / Ding Hai Effect worked for the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index?

Environment: Earth Hour 2009

Did anyone of you join the Earth Hour event last week? What is Earth Hour? From Wikipedia,
“Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, also known as World Wildlife Fund) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change.”
The event was conceived by WWF and first took place in Sydney in 2007, and then exploded into many parts of the world in 2008.

That night, I was out doing some shopping and thus there was no light on at home, but I was rather disappointed that the shops inside the mall didn’t join this remarkable event. I mean, come on, there wasn’t much business to do anyway. Maybe if they did join the event, and lit candles instead, the shops might have attracted more customers because of the mood and the curiosity of the people.

What can an hour of lights out do?

We are not talking about one home, but all around the world! Now that’s something much more different. Power is generated mostly from the burning of oil and coal these days, and by switching off redundant lights for one hour, it was enough to reduce the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission by a monumental amount! Data can be found on the WWF national websites as well as from Wikipedia.

What I think is even more important, is that human beings truly see no boundaries of countries, races and beliefs, and stand together to protect the one thing that nurtures as for many billions of years – our planet Earth. This common goal of survival does not base on declaring wars or triggering bloodshed, neither on generating money nor capturing resources, but on protecting Mother Nature. Every time I think about this, it just keeps giving me a rush of heroism to the chest.

How was the movie clip? Every time I watch it, I feel so touched and wants to cry so much!

When I was a little boy, like many other ones, thought about becoming a hero when I grew up, but I had no ideas how I could achieve that. Today, we all know how to be heroes, and everybody can take part in saving this awesome planet of ours – reduce, reuse and recycle.

Here I have a nice song from the Discovery Channel, called Boom De Ya Da! Sang by a lot of program hosts and hostesses, as well as famous scientist, Stephen Hawkings.

Easter is coming, let's make this world a happier and better place to live. If you care, every day is Earth Hour.

"We take so much from this planet, and what do we give back?" -- Locky

Coming soon: Review of the Japanese movie "Departure"

Reply to comments & readers:

1. Happy Learning as always!