On Jan 18, 2008 6:02 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
A suggestion from a reader, emailed to me:
I'm not press, but this seemed the only access to the Wikipedes. (Mind you, I am a former newspaper columnist.) As a lexicographer, I admire Wikipedia, and offer one suggestion. Ask your contributors to indicate pronunciation where needed. For instance, I had to look up an actress with the first name of "Cote." Is it [COAT]? [ko-TAY]? [KO-tay]?
Quite a few of our articles on people include the pronunciation, but it's far from universal. Would anyone be interested in a drive to fill out pronunciations? (What groups of Wikipedians are fans of this stuff?) Adding a field in the infoboxes might help too.
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.
Johnleemk