On 18/01/2008, Tony Sidaway tonysidaway@gmail.com wrote:
On 18/01/2008, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On a related note, it would be helpful if we, you know, used a pronunciation guide that makes sense to most English-speaking people. The IPA thing is nonsense, and I have never been able to glean more than bits of redundant pronunciation information from it.
Agreed. IPA is great for people that know it, so it's worth including, but a simple phonetic spelling should also be provided, or even just a "rhymes with X".
But how do you pronounce word X? English pronunciation varies very, very widely (even in tiny England the range of pronunciation of simple words like "rub" and "new" is quite large) At least IPA has consistency, and if I really need to know what those funny squiggles mean I can click on the link in the template to see exactly that.
IPA is great for giving precise pronunciations, but simpler methods are great for people that just want a general idea so they can read the article (unpronounceable words can make it hard to read something, even silently - it disrupts the flow). Oh, any less of the "tiny", if you don't mind...