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The Phone-of-the-Month Club
No, no.. we’re not suggesting you get a new cell phone every month! We’ll leave that to those iPhone guys. Rather, this is an opportunity for you to learn something exciting every month about one of the many sounds found in that magnificent menagerie of human languages.
A New Confident You!
Following in the grand tradition of the Language-of-The-Month Club (over 1 Million satisfied customers have learned about hundreds of languages over the years), the Phone-of-the-Month Club offers you a sure-fire way to avoid those embarrassing situations we’ve all found ourselves in: someone is talking about the non-distinctive phonetic variation of the palatal lateral approximants in some language they are studying, and you are having trouble remembering exactly how to make that sound.
When An “r” Is Not Just An /ɹ/
Or you encounter an “r”, and that pesky categorical perception you developed learning to speak your native tongue flawlessly is interfering with your ability to tell if it is a regular old approximant or a tap or a trill, whether it is alveolar, retroflex, or even uvular. That kind of problem gets old, old, old and fast, fast, fast.
All This For Less Than $1.50 A Day
That’s right, for significantly less than what you might spend on coffee each day, you can get a fabulous monthly Phone-of-the-Month package, which includes:
- A plush IPA symbol for the selected Phone-of-the-Month.
- A CD with hundreds of examples of the Phone-of-the-Month, spoken by native speakers of at least ten different language families (unless fewer are known), and hundreds of examples of minimal pairs with the Phone-of-the-Month and other commonly confused phones, presented in dozens of phonetic contexts (please specify your native language).
- A DVD that includes video of all of the examples on the CD, as well as slo-motion high resolution x-ray video of the Phone-of-the-Month (also available in Blu-ray format for $10 extra per month).
- A Phone-of-the-Month fact sheet with pronunciation guide, a list of key acoustic correlates, full-color photographs of distinctive spectrographic features, non-IPA transcriptional variants, computer typing guidelines (for OS X, Linux, BeOS, Amiga, Xenix, HP-UX, OS/2, Symbolics, Minix, and NeXTSTEP1), and an extensive list of languages the phone occurs in, along with an indication of whether the sound is a full phoneme or just an allophone in the languages cited.
- And the most exciting feature of all! Our latest and greatest innovation: a fully-articulated battery-powered Vocal Tract Conformation Device®©⊗ that will shape your speech organs to perfectly reproduce the sounds of the Phone-of-the-Month. Please specify mouth size at the time of registration. Sizes include XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL ($2 extra per month), and Steven Tyler ($14 extra per month).
- All in an attractive 12”x10”x4” carrying and display case.
Beginner Or Expert
Our Beginner Package for the IPA novice starts with the most common sounds of your native language that can be represented with standard Latin characters available on your standard computer keyboard, and slowly expands your phonetic horizons beyond anything you have dreamt of!
If you have already conquered the basics of the IPA, we also have an Expert Package that starts with the more complicated sounds and symbols!
Fill out the order form below to start your subscription ($41.99 per month) to the Phone-of-the-Month Club!
Name: | | _______________________ |
Address: | | _______________________ |
| | _______________________ |
Credit Card #: | | _______________________ |
Expiration Date: | | ____/____/____ |
Native Language: | | _______________________ |
Choose one: | | Basic or Expert |
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Send your completed form to:
Phone-of-the-Month Club
Lingua Pranca Enterprises
P.O. Box ɷ
A Northern Town
Ultima Thule, 00000-0000
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1 We couldn’t figure it out under Windows for most IPA symbols either. Sorry.