--- Stevertigo <stevertigo(a)attbi.com> wrote:
This is where English, I think is in the minority,
and will typically tend
to reject like the metric system any attempt at
mundification. So typically
English sounds arent it - and neither are SAMPA
eugh! (There was an
interesting booktv talk on the origins of the
American units system, btw --
and why today people in the US look at the metric
system in a xenophobic and
skeptical way)
Well, not *all* Americans think that, but a
significant number of them do so that no polititions
in office want to make the change.
I challenge anyone to show us here a scheme that is
both easy to read (SAMPA
eugh) and gives all the sonic description that these
attempt to. In the end,
the sonic descriptors are practically irrelevant
when they get into too much
detail -- regardless of how accurately you interpret
the signs, youre still
going to speak the foreign word with your particular
accent. And its going
to be wrong. The merits of the Roman alphabet are
that its fairly standard,
covers quite enough ground -- is modifyable in
slight ways (ie pinyin,
romaji.... SAMPA eugh!)
eugh? The way you use it, it sounds bad, but I don't
see what's wrong with SAMPA. I don't see why we have
the need for a "readable" system in the first place.
If you mean "readable" as in "looks similar to English
spelling", you're out of luck. Even the most complex
system cannot match the utter irrationality of English
spelling.
Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some
direction toward an
international standard is a good idea.
-S-
Exactly. And the other systems have been developed
over several years by phonetics professors. We could
never do better than them. Oh, yeah, we do have
professors here. But it would still be hard to do well
at making a complex system like this.
-LittleDan
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com