Transcription exercises

EXERCISE 1.

Make both a phonemic (broad) and a phonetic (narrow) transcription of the following words.

EXERCISE 2.

Make both a phonemic (broad) and a phonetic (narrow) transcription of the following words.

EXERCISE 3.

Make both a phonemic (broad) and a phonetic (narrow) transcription of the following words.

EXERCISE 4.

Make both a phonemic (broad) and a phonetic (narrow) transcription transcription of the following words.

EXERCISE 5.

Make both a phonemic (broad) and a phonetic (narrow) transcription of the following sentences.

1. 
   Cats and dogs need to be loved and walked every day.
2. 
   
   I lugged the suitcases all the way from the polished vestibule to the flats' antiquated old lift.
3. 
   
   The atmosphere of the cosy studio was not at all conducive to the sort of thing the Armenian teenager had in mind.
4. 
   
   The special vision which ocean birds have enables them to inspect chasms which we would miss.
5. 
   
   The little nurse drew a deep breath,
   
   
   wiped the tears of merriment from her eyes and began to make her preparations for giving the patient his injection.
6. 
   
   Maddened and angry they were leaping and howling round the trunks,
   
   
   and cursing the dwarves in their horrible language, with their tongues hanging out and their red eyes shining as red and fierce as the flames.
7. 
   
   Somewhere behind the grey clouds the sun must have gone down,
   
   
   for it began to get dark as they went down into the deep valley with a river at the bottom.
8. 
   
   Far away I hear the distant drumming of my father as he begins practicing for a local band competition.
9. 
   
   Students seeking guidance thought his sudden absence was quite rotten.
10. 
    
    The inner illumination was swallowed up in another kind of light.

EXERCISE 6

Make both a phonemic (broad) and a phonetic (narrow) transcription of the following passages.

Passage 1

The sun was just rising as Dr Robert entered his wife's room at the hospital.


An orange glow


and, against it,


the jagged silhouette of the mountains.


Then suddenly a dazzling sickle of incandescence between two peaks.


The sickle became a half-circle and the first long shadows,


the first shafts of golden light crossed the garden outside the window.


And when one looked up again at the mountains


there was the whole unbearable glory of the risen sun.

Passage 2

I was thinking of two people I met last time I was in England.


At Cambridge.


One of them was an atomic physicist,


the other was a philosopher.


Both extremely eminent.


But one had a mental age, outside the laboratory,


of about eleven


and the other was a compulsive eater with a weight problem that he refused to face.


Two extreme examples of what happens when you take a clever boy,


give him fifteen years of the most intensive formal education


and totally neglect to do anything for the mind-body


which has to do the learning and the living.

Passage 3

Up jumped Bilbo,


and putting on his dressing-gown went into the dining room.


There he saw nobody,


but all the signs of a large and hurried breakfast.


There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen.


Nearly every pot and pan he possessed seemed to have been used.


The washing-up was so dismally real


that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams,


as he had rather hoped.


Indeed he was really relieved after


to think that they had all gone without him,


without bothering to wake him up


'but with never a thank you' he thought)


and yet


in a way


he couldn't help feeling just a trifle disappointed.


The feeling surprised him.

Passage 4

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum,


a small slimy creature.


I don't know where he came from,


nor who or what he was.


He was a Gollum -


as dark as darkness,


except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face.


He had a little boat,


and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake;


for lake it was,


wide and deep


and deadly cold.


He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side,


but never a ripple did he make.


Not he.


He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish,


which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking.


He liked meat too.


Goblin he thought good, when he could get it


but he took care they never found him out.


He just throttled them from behind,


if ever they came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about.


They seldom did,


for they had a feeling


that something unpleasant was lurking down there,


down at the very roots of the mountain.