Phonetic alphabet

[Lingua Franca]

It seems like common sense, to learn the phonetic alphabet of a language, but till now I still find that it's not common practice. I think it's of great importance to learn and doesn't take that long to teach or learn.

How important do you think it's to learn the phonetic alphabet and have you taught it? 

[linguaholic]

In my opinion, it depends on what language you are actually learning. When I was learning Chinese, it was very important for me to learn it, because it was all new for me. So we did learn this in class and many Chinese textbooks contain exercises and lists about this subject. However, when I was studying French for instance, I also had to learn the basics about the phonetic alphabet, but it was definitely not a very important element in my 'french learning journey'. 

[czarina84]

What exactly do you mean by "phonetic alphabet"?  Here in the US, it means the military or "NATO" alphabet.  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. 

[宇崎ちゃん]

What exactly do you mean by "phonetic alphabet"?  Here in the US, it means the military or "NATO" alphabet.  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. 

A phonetic alphabet is a series of characters that make a sound.
Chinese characters for example is no phonetic alphabet, since each character has its own meaning and are pronounced differently in all languages it uses (in some cases, one language even has multiple pronunciations for a single character).

Latin, Cyrillic (lots of Slavic languages), Hangul (Korean), Hiragana and Katakana (Japanese), Arabic, and Hebrew (and many more) on the other hand are phonetic alphabets, since these characters have a sound.
Let's say "A" is pronounced differently in English than it is in the rest of the world, "V" on the other hand has 2 pronunciations in Spanish, but neither of those have a direct meaning.
Sometimes they do, like in Dutch: "ei" is a phonetic sound similar to the English "I" sound, but it also means "egg". Or "ui", which is hard to explain in English what sound it makes, but it also means "onion".
But it doesn't mean that "huis" has anything to do with onions, it just means "house".

[linguaholic]

oh I got this wrong then. I thought he would refer to something like all the different syllables in Chinese or just the different sounds of all the letters from A to Z. 

[Wanda Kaishin]

I'm pretty sure that the OP is referring to IPA. It's probably a good idea to learn the IPA of a language in the beginning, especially if you already know it for other languages, but I admit I've never done this step. I usually jump right into the script, because pronunciation seems to be my strong point.

[linguaholic]

Yea, I was thinking about IPA as well. Maybe one day I'm going to open a section just for IPA here on linguaholic.com :=) Also a section for ASL would be interesting. However, my experience in running forums tells me that is NOT a good idea to make too many subforums. 

[Lingua Franca]

What exactly do you mean by "phonetic alphabet"?  Here in the US, it means the military or "NATO" alphabet.  Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. 

This is when you learn the alphabet of a language but how it's actually pronounced. We learn how to recite the alphabet bet when we use it in the written language the sounds of the letters are different. Sometimes the letter for a sound in one language is represented by another letter in another language. This can lead to great amount of confusion. If the  the phonetic alphabet was taught first, this could be avoided.

[kurdapia]

I personally start my lesson with the IPA and alphabets then followed by the numbers. That is how I would want to begin if I were to learn a foreign language especially if it is a bit different from the English language. I want to cover the basics, I do not want to skip it only to refer back to it when there is a need because that would mean chaos to me.

[Wanda Kaishin]

my experience in running forums tells me that is NOT a good idea to make too many subforums. 

I agree with that philosophy. That's the main reason I don't go to Unilang.

I personally start my lesson with the IPA and alphabets then followed by the numbers. That is how I would want to begin if I were to learn a foreign language especially if it is a bit different from the English language. 

I admire your discipline.

[linguaholic]

Same for me Wanda. Unilang seems to be an interesting place but it is just Chaos there. And the layout/design is not very modern/attractive to say the least.