I took an introduction to Phonetics class and this was the final project. We were given sound files for an unlabeled language that we didn't know. Our job was to transcribe each of those sounds in order to then create phonetic inventory charts (as shown above and below). The fun thing about this process was that your language could include sounds not used in English or even sounds you'd ever heard before. Once we finished the transcriptions and charts, we were given an article that contained the actual transcriptions and charts made by actual linguists. My charts are on the right, the article charts on the left.
This was the most challenging project I've done in college so far. And I absolutely loved it. We didn't have to worry about mistakes in our transcriptions (which was lucky) because the goal of this project is to introduce you to resources and methods used by phoneticians and to help you hone your transcription skills. It was interesting to see what kinds of mistakes I'd make and how they'd reveal my biases as an English speaker. The project took so much work, spread over almost the entire quarter and I was very proud of the work I did and the skills I learned.
