Learning How to Learn a Language

Many of you have asked (or oftentimes understandably assumed) if we are learning Portuguese while we are here at the linguistics school (GIAL) in Dallas.  While it makes sense why you would think that, Trevor is actually picking up the building blocks of how to learn ANY language!

You may be familiar with something called IPA.  All of our music major friends from Cedarville...at least all the vocalists...know exactly what we are talking about.  IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet.  It is a system of notating very specific sounds that we make with our mouth.  One could loosely link it to "phonics" when teaching a small child to read.  For example, our daughter Eliana gets excited to watch one of the Arthur movies we rented from the library.  Instead of saying "ArTHur", her mouth says "ArFur".  Naturally we are trying to teach her that instead of putting her lower lip behind her upper teeth, instead she should put her tongue between her teeth to achieve the sound "TH".

When learning a new language, the learner must first be able to produce the sounds that make up the words in the new language.  To aid in learning, he/she can utilize IPA so that they can notate all the specific sounds that go into creating that one word.  The mouth is a pretty incredible instrument, capable of making way more sounds that we make use of in the English language.

All this to say, Trevor has been coming home and practicing all the new sounds that he is required to learn.  He practices saying them to me, and then I of course take my own stab at pronouncing them...I'm not too bad, if I do say so myself!

I wanted to share one particular word with you just because it's one of Trevor's favorite words to practice.  The picture at the beginning of this post is what it looks like on paper, and the video below is what it sounds AND looks like.