This short video consists of an audio track alongside a projection of subtitles in International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA), a notation system for every sound that any human can make in speech.
The system is largely attributed to phonetician Daniel Jones – after whom playwrite Bernard Shaw famously modeled the character of Henry Higgins. Jones initiated a yearly Summer Course of English Phonetics that still brings large groups of scholars from all over the world to the UCL in London. In 2014 Nicoline van Harskamp, who taught herself IPA and aspires to one day write it at verbatim speed like Henry Higgins, attended the course and conducted an experiment among her fellow students and her teachers. She played them an audio clip with her own voice and asked them to comment on her English or, in linguistic terms, her ‘production’. The various critiques are collaged into an audio track, and subtitled using the symbols of the IPA.