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.