Emily Monroe bluecaliocean@me.com wrote:
Okay, but which pronoucation should we use? Australian English? British English? Canadian English? Does this matter with IPA?
If you look at the IPA for English page you'll see all of the major English dialects represented, and yes there are substantial phonetic differences between them - vowels particularly. Plain English is flexible for all of these dialects such that spelling things out in IPA isn't necessary. Using IPA to distinguish between English dialects would be overcomplicating.
Dealing with foreign concepts however - that is, the 80% of the planet that doesn't originate from an English-speaking culture - should require using some basic pronunciation scheme. And like DGG said, we're fortunate to have a single internaŹonal standard in the first place.
-Stevertigo