Sunday, September 3, 2017

Rules of Pronunciation

There are many guides online, problem with most of them they all use different notations, some use custom notation, some use APA (American Phonetic), very few use IPA. As you can imagine, irregular "rules" for pronunciation is also major obstacle for American (and English) children to learn reading.

Basic rules

This page for kids compares APA and IPA and mentions rules.
Another good page with rules - more - 7 and 14 rules

Udemy is well-recognized resource for inexpensive online learning with lots of courses. It's pronunciation guide promotes inexpensive course  to improve pronunciation

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Bilingual Comics

... or comics in two languages:

GoComics.com has comics in Spanish and same comics in English too. I checked:

  • Calvin and Hobbes in English and Spanish are same images in both languages since Jan 1, 2011
  • Tarzan in English and Spanish since Jan 7, 2007
  • Dilbert on GoComics is out-of-sync, but Spanish version seems to be in sync with official Dilbert website (I started reading present and continued to previous strips). Wikipedia has info about main characters, you can check also version in your own language.
  • Dilbert website also provides transcript of all text of the comics, which you can translate by Google to your own language (even if it is more work and less fun).
  • If you get some comic in your own language, try to find it on Read Comics Online. For Spanish learners Eternaut is a famous Argentinian graphic novella. I was able to find free download with my limited Spanish (but I am not not sure how legal, so I do not post the link).