[WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

[Stevertigo]

LD and I were talking about this at length. In attempting to sort out some
basic rules for phonetic schemes, it occurred to us that though phonetics
are important, they would tend to default to majority accents - which are
irreconcilable ethno-political fodder.

English words act as symbolic placeholders which contain an idea within the
shape -- just as Hanzi does.  This, despite the fact that shape of English
words of course, is entirely designed to represent the phonetic -- these
shapes in and of themselves make no attempt at representing the thing
itself --unlike Han ideographs.

So theres a tradeoff with each.  English, though the lingua franca -- is not
in the majority in terms of how its vowels are used.  Its this difference
between American English and the older and the
more widespread Latin/Balto-Slavic vowel sounds that exemplifies the bulk of
any disagreement.  I mean, if you cant agree on what an "a" sounds like, you
cant really continue.

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)

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!)

Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some direction toward an
international standard is a good idea.

-S-