--- Stevertigo stevertigo@attbi.com wrote:
This is where English, I think is in the minority, and will typically tend to reject like the metric system any attempt at mundification. So typically English sounds arent it - and neither are SAMPA eugh! (There was an interesting booktv talk on the origins of the American units system, btw -- and why today people in the US look at the metric system in a xenophobic and skeptical way)
Well, not *all* Americans think that, but a significant number of them do so that no polititions in office want to make the change.
I challenge anyone to show us here a scheme that is both easy to read (SAMPA eugh) and gives all the sonic description that these attempt to. In the end, the sonic descriptors are practically irrelevant when they get into too much detail -- regardless of how accurately you interpret the signs, youre still going to speak the foreign word with your particular accent. And its going to be wrong. The merits of the Roman alphabet are that its fairly standard, covers quite enough ground -- is modifyable in slight ways (ie pinyin, romaji.... SAMPA eugh!)
eugh? The way you use it, it sounds bad, but I don't see what's wrong with SAMPA. I don't see why we have the need for a "readable" system in the first place. If you mean "readable" as in "looks similar to English spelling", you're out of luck. Even the most complex system cannot match the utter irrationality of English spelling.
Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some direction toward an international standard is a good idea. -S-
Exactly. And the other systems have been developed over several years by phonetics professors. We could never do better than them. Oh, yeah, we do have professors here. But it would still be hard to do well at making a complex system like this.
-LittleDan
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