On 18/01/2008, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: The problem is that Pronunciation Is Hard [TM]. We get this request a lot on OTRS, and the universal response is "we try to, but coverage is patchy". There have been drives in the past, but they've foundered on: a) not too many people are motivated to do it; b) in many cases, the people who are motivated to do it aren't the ones who also know how it's pronounced; c) we insist on using IPA rather than "pronounced KO-tay". c) is kind of the sticking point. Very few people are confident and competent with IPA; to most of us, it is at best something that we encounter in dictionaries and try not to think too hard about. This means that our editors aren't likely to add it (because they don't feel comfortable using it, and certainly don't want to spend fifteen minutes with a lookup table and some incomprehensible runes to get a valid word), and that our readers aren't likely to use it even if it's there. But we don't have much option! Anything else is simply ineffective for a project with such a wide and diffuse base of contributors and users - saying "rhymes with X" or some kind of phonetic spelling is only reliable if we assume that everyone pronounces X, or interprets those syllables, the same way. [This is also the reason why giving dictionary-style definitions for normal nouns - "tomato" - would rapidly fall over; too much local variation. Names and other proper nouns have a "right" pronunciation regardless of where you are, though, so we can get away with it] And we just have too many contributors, too wide a readerbase, to be able to say that with any degree of confidence. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk