Technical help
Viewing phonetic symbols
Many of the modules in this website contain phonetic symbols and for these to be displayed correctly your computer must be able to use UniCode fonts. In virtually all instances this will be the case, so that you need not worry about configuring your system in any special way. However, you will have to ensure that your browser is setup for dispalying Unicode fonts (fonts which contain many more symbols than needed for the Latin alphabet and including phonetic symbols). To check this do the following:
Windows Internet Explorer 6
Click View, then Encoding and select Unicode (UTF-8)
Windows Internet Explorer 7 and higher
Click View (or Page), then Encoding and select Unicode (UTF-8)
Mozilla FireFox
Listening to sound files
You can access sound files at several points in the present application, mostly by clicking the symbol of an ear which represents the sound file iconically, or by clicking on a name or word when the mouse cursor changes to a small hand symbol. How this is then played depends on how your computer is configured. The sound files all have the extension MP3. The operating system of your computer, Microsoft Windows or the built-in system of Apple Mac computers, will load the program which has been designated as default for playing files with this extension, i.e. for playing sound files. On PC’s this will probably be the Windows Media Player, but if you have installed other software then this may override the Windows Media Player and your specified program will be loaded instead. Which software you use for listening to sound files is ultimately a matter of personal choice.
To restore the Windows Media Player as default, you should load the Windows Explorer, then in the Tools menu under Folder Options, choose the tab File Types. Now locate MP3 files and then select Change. Another window opens and you are prompted to choose a program to use when loading the file type in question, i.e. MP3 files. Now select Browse to specify a program to use for sound files. Note that you can find the program WMPLAYER.EXE (or MPLAYER2.EXE if you have an older version of Windows) in the Windows Media Player folder under the Program Files folder on drive C: (most probably the drive with your Windows installation). There are newer versions of this program presently available, and one will also be in this folder, if it has been installed on your computer. Windows remembers your choice of program for sound files and will use this in future unless it is later changed.