Oliver Pereira wrote:
Indications of native pronunciations would be very useful. Is there support for displaying all the standard IPA characters...?
You can use HTML-style character references with the Unicode numbers for IPA chars, but not everyone will be able to read them. (If someone wants to put up mini images, it may be worthwhile.)
In some articles, SAMPA is used, which is an ASCIIfied IPA, but this is somewhat controversial as no one knows how to read it even though it appears right on everyone's screen. ;) If you use a SAMPA transcription in an article, you'll probably want to link [[SAMPA]] for reference.
Pseudo-English pronunciation guides (Paris->"pah-REE", Goethe->"GER-ta") are generally not recommended, as the results may vary widely for native English speakers, be useless for non-native English speakers, and often do a poor job at reproducing the necessary sounds. They remain somewhat popular largely because native English speakers are often not familiar with IPA.
And I like your idea of linked sound files, too. (It would be quite a task, though!)
Yes, by all means make and upload sound files of pronunciations of names! Please do! (Preferably OGG format at a lower bitrate.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)