Some months ago I saw a call for teachers for virtual Trimaris Heraldic, Scribal, and Linguistics Symposium. Since I did a lot of linguistics work for my BA, I felt that I might be able to contribute to these classes. I eventually settled on the basics of phonetics as being an area of linguistics relevant to the SCA that I know enough about to teach. (Sadly, I have almost no knowledge of historical linguistics, which would be incredibly fascinating.)
Ever since I learned the International Phonetic Alphabet in undergrad, I have had a little bit of a bee in my bonnet about its usefulness in learning and recording pronunciations. Having used it to record pronunciations of students’ names in my modern life, I have firsthand evidence of how well it works for reminding me of how to pronounce unfamiliar names. So it seemed a natural fit for voice heraldry and I ended up producing a class partly about how phonetics works and partly about why heralds should use the IPA to make their lives easier.
So far I have taught this class at several heraldic and scribal symposia (all virtual) and am scheduled to teach it for one of Avacal’s Heraldic Mondays later this year. (I’m especially excited about this because they’re the ones who contacted me about teaching.) I believe that at least one of the class sessions was recorded and will be made available online at some point, though that is not something I am in charge of making happen. I do have the class handout available at this link for those who are interested to peruse. And, since it helps dramatically to have the IPA chart available for reference, it can be downloaded in a variety of formats from the International Phonetic Association at this link.