This page contains links to resources on the web which will be useful to you for Ling 200 (and hopefully in other linguistics classes as well).

Phonetic Fonts and Keyboard Input

In this class, you are required to download and use the Doulos SIL Font for doing your assignments and exams for the remainder of the semester (starting with Homework #5, Phonetics). This is a Unicode font which works on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. This is generally the best font to use for IPA characters. It is fully Unicode compliant, works on all platforms, and costs nothing to download and use. This font provides a full IPA Unicode character set, something which other Unicode fonts do not generally have. Please download and install this font. Other IPA fonts will not work for purposes of your assignments! If you are having trouble downloading or installing the fonts from the above link, please contact your college Computer Associate, a tech-savvy friend, or e-mail Dr. E or the TAs for help. It is a requirement for this class that you use this font; failure to do so will lead to difficulties on your homework assignments and exams, as your TAs and professor will be unable to read your work if you have not used this font. The Linguistics department has requested that these fonts also be available on Owlnet Lab computers for student use.

Once you have installed the Doulos SIL Font on your computer, the next step is to learn how to insert IPA symbols into your documents. There are three good ways of doing this, discussed below (from easiest to most complicated). Whichever method you choose, you must keep the following points in mind:

• Your word processor must be Unicode compatible. For Microsoft office,, anything after Microsoft Office 2000 (including Office Xp and Office 2004) will work, or anything after Microsoft Office X for the Macintosh. For other word processors, you will need to check to make sure they can handle a full Unicode character set.
• Be sure to set the Doulos SIL font as the active font for your document. To do this in Word, open a new document and change to 'Doulos SIL' in the font selection box on the toolbar. If you are working in a pre-existing file, select the entire contents of the file (ctrl-a), and then change to 'Doulos SIL' in the font selection box on the toolbar.

The way to get IPA characters which most students in Ling 200 have found to be the easiest and most convenient is to use a web-based IPA character picker. This is especially handy for people who don't want to learn new keyboard layouts, or who simply want a quick and easy way of pasting Unicode IPA characters into a document. Go to http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/ipa. Clicking on an IPA symbol in the chart will insert it into the text box at the bottom of the page, from which you may select it, copy it, and paste it directly into your document.

If you are using Microsoft Word, another easy way to get IPA symbols into your document is to type in the Unicode values directly, and then use Words 'toggle character code' command. To do this, take the following steps:

1. Make sure Doulos SIL is set as the active font for the document.
2. Look up the Unicode value (a 4-place hexadecimal number) of the IPA character you wish to insert. If you print out the following file, you will have an easy reference sheet for all symbols used in this class: IPA Unicode Table for Ling 200.
3. Type the four-digit code, and immediately press ALT-x on your keyboard.

If you will be typing a large amount of IPA data, you may wish to consider a keyboard mapping utility which allows you to access IPA characters by using special combinations or sequences of keys. An excellent one for Windows is IPA Unicode 1.0.4 Keyman Keyboard. Documentation is included in the download. To use this keyboard layout, you will also need to download and install Tavultesoft Keyman from Tavultesoft. Note that you will need to register Keyman, for which there is a small fee. If you use a Macintosh, IPAkeys provides an IPA Unicode keyboard layout for Mac OS X for use with the Doulos SIL Unicode font. And an   IPA Palette can be used on OS 10.2 and later. For additional input methods for Windows, Mac, and Linux, visit the SIL Character Input page.

Unicode Compatible Browsers

You also need to make sure your web browser is fully compatible with Unicode. If it isn't, you will have difficulty taking the second midterm, which will require you to input a number of IPA symbols on WebCT. We strongly suggest you use the Firefox browser, available at http://www.getfirefox.com. Students have had numerous problems getting IPA fonts to work in WebCT using Internet Explorer 6 and below; IE 7 works well though. We will do a practice quiz ahead of time, to make sure your browser works before the second midterm, and so that you will have time to resolve any browser-related issues.

Web Resources about Languages and Linguistics

The textbook we are using has a Book Companion Site with lots of interesting and useful resources which will be of use to you in Ling/Anth 200. Please visit this site and see what it has to offer!

The UCLA phonetics lab offers a clickable IPA chart which lets you click on and listen to all of the sounds represented on the IPA chart. This gives you a full chart--please remember that you are responsible for memorizing the one handed out in class instead, which is specific to the sounds for American English.

A web page available at the University of Iowa gives you access to video presentations of the Sounds of American English, letting you watch how the articulators work when producing each of the sounds.

The electronic version of Ethnologue: Languages of the World provides basic ethnographic and geographic information about most of the known languages of the world. It is a good place to look if you want to know where a particular language is spoken, how many speakers there are, what its linguistic affiliation is, and other such details.

This section is still under construction. Please E-mail me at reng {at} rice.edu if you know of material relevant to Ling 200 which you think should be included here.