Think about how you might describe the pronunciation of the English word cat (cat pictured below). If you had to tell someone what's the first sound of the word, what would you tell them?

Saying "The first sound of cat is a 'k' sound" will not be sufficient. Why do you think it's insufficient? (Hint: can you think of other English words that are written with a "k" but don't have this same sound? Can you think of other English words that have this sound but aren't written with a "k"?)

Read the poem "Hints on Pronunciation". Make sure you read it out loud.

While reading it, think about the question I raised at the beginning of this activity: why do we need phonetic descriptions?

After reading it, reflect on this question: What does this poem show us about the need for phonetic description? (Hint: Why can't we just say some word is pronounced with "the 'ou' sound"? What does 'ou' represent?)

Here is a made-up word:

ghoti

How do you think this word can be pronounced in English?

Some people say this word should be pronounced like "fish". Does that surprise you?

Why can this word be pronounced like "fish"? How can this make sense with English spelling? (If you can't figure it out on your own, it's ok to search online for information about this word.)

The same word, with the same spelling, can have different pronunciations by different people (for example, because of different dialects). Watch the following clip, from the movie Snatch. What different ways do people pronounce the word dog?

You probably get the idea by now. All the previous examples were related to English spelling. They all illustrate the same thing: English spelling does not clearly and consistently represent the sounds of language. In fact, English writing is infamous for that problem.

You might wonder, therefore, if this is only a problem with English. Maybe English speakers should learn phonetics because their writing system is messed up, but maybe other languages don't have this problem? Let's find out...

Mandarin can be written with Hanyu Pinyin, which is a much more consistent and logical writing system than English. So, can Mandarin speakers describe sounds unambiguously by using Hanyu Pinyin?

Sometimes this works. For example, think of the sentence 四是四，十是十，十四是十四，四十是四十，四十四是四十四。 Some people pronounce this as sì shì sì, shí shì shí, shísì shì shísì, sìshí shì sìshí, sìshísì shì sìshísì. Others pronounce it as sì sì sì, sí sì sí, sísì sì sísì, sìsí sì sìsí, sìsísì sì sìsísì. So in this case, Pinyin can accurately describe the pronunciation differences.

But what about 人? Some people pronounce this different ways, even within Mandarin. You can listen here; the first three are a more typical northern pronunciation and the last three are a more typical southern pronunciation:

Or consider 耳邊. You can listen here; the first three are a more typical mainland pronunciation and the last three are a more typical Taiwan pronunciation:

Is it possible to describe the differences between these sounds using Pinyin?