--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Anthere wrote in part:
We should have sounds in wiktionary... to be NPOV, each word would have to respect each
pronunciation :-)
I'd suggest developing a morphophonic system for each language. Then the transcription can link to a page that explains how the morphophones correspond to phonemes (even phones) in some major dialects. But the morphophones don't play favourites (and you can always keep adding to the list of "major" dialects).
I explained briefly what morphophones are in a previous post. The classic reference seems to be: Smith, Henry Lee, Jr.; 1967; The Concept of the Morphophone; Language 43:3:306-341. I should look that up if I'm going to talk much more. ^_^
And...I pronounce nuclear, newclear :-(((
What you don't realise is that /everybody/ pronounces "nuclear" as "newclear". It is "new" itself that's pronounced "nyoo" /nju:/ in some dialects and "noo" /nu:/ in others. This is the English morphphone .long-u..
-- Toby
There already is a morphophonic system for English that is used in most (or atleast several) dictionaries (I know atleast Webster). The only problem is that it uses strange accent marks and does very poorly with non-leading r's. Word/phrases like "going to" don't fair well either. I don't really see how any morphophonic system can deal with the wide range between /g@n@/ and /goIN tu/, and in some cases, we will need to write multiple pronunciations anyway. Where I live, there are two towns, Chili and Charlotte, which are pronounced completely differently than a normal New York state accent would prescribe. We pronounce them /tSailai/ and /Sar\l'at/ respectively, whereas people from elsewhere pronounce it /tSIli/ and /'Sar\lIt/. There is no regular pattern for this. I tried to develope a morphophonic system while at camp but encountered these problems (but it can do what the current system can do without accent marks).
In any event, it would be very confusing for readers to have a pronounciation system unique to wikipedia that they'd have to learn.
-LittleDan
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