On 1/19/08, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
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.
[I have a linguistics degree with a whole subject worth of phonetics, so I am Qualified To Speak On The Subject]
IPA *is* hard. It's a real bitch to write in wikitext, it's not easy to get right, and people don't even want it. I also don't think it's appropriate for expressing the pronunciation of English names/words/places, because they should really be given in a phonemic pronunciation (eg, the pronounciation of "Prahran" should only communicate to the reader that it's puh-RAN, without describing the Australian accent as well). IPA is probably the best tool for foreign words though.
So, for non-IPA contexts, rhyming is good. We Australians are well used to seeing American rhyming schemes given. Sometimes it's odd - I saw a pronunciation for "boffin" given as "BAW-fuhn", but we get the gist. People play up the differences in regional accent far too much - all we're trying to communicate is the rough structure of the name, what syllables are stressed, whether "Reibl" is an "ee" or an "eye" sound.
[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
Giving a pronunciation for a common English word is a bad idea. Giving a pronunciation for a rarer word, like "gilliflower" is helpful.
In summary: - Only provide pronuncations where it's actually helpful or there is an ambiguity - Use IPA for foreign words, some rhyming scheme for English words
Steve