At 12:02 PM 8/6/02 +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:
Ah, but WHICH prononciation of an English
language word? American?
English? Australian? Canadian? The correct official dictionary version
often varies by country, and what people actually say is even more
widely different.
Let's have all of them. And if the difference is interesting, let's
have an article that discusses the pronounciation. Let's forget about
that old "correct official dictionary version". This is Wikipedia.
Time to be radical.
Even dictionary versions generally say something like "this is
pronounced with "a as in father", so the reader knows that *however*
she pronounces "father", she should use the same vowel sound in
the word being described. The idea is that there are consistent
patterns in how pronunciations shift, not that there is one canonical
way to say "father".
It's still imperfect, of course, but it's not as bad as we seem to be
assuming.
That said, I agree with Lars.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr(a)redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org