[WikiEN-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA

[Daniel Ehrenberg]

--- David Friedland <david at nohat.net> wrote:
> The American Heritage Dictionary gives the following
> explanation of 
> their pronunciation scheme:
> 
> "For most words a single set of symbols can
> represent the 
> pronunciation found in each regional variety of
> American English. You 
> will supply those features of your own regional
> speech that are called 
> forth by the pronunciation key in this Dictionary"
> 
> And it seems like a panacea for the pronunciation
> problem. But it's not, 
> because some words simply have different underlying
> representations in 
> different dialects, and the system only works for
> dialects that are 
> roughly the same except for a few sound changes. It
> fails for wildly or 
> even mildly divergent dialects. The American
> Heritage Dictionary system 
> sweeps this problem under the rug by saying "The
> pronunciations are 
> exclusively those of educated speech", which, to my
> mind, is a cop-out, 
> and not a satisfactory solution for Wikipedia.
> 
> However, the question of dialect remains. Obviously
> listing 
> pronunciations in all possible dialects is not a
> reasonable solution, 
> and indeed, nor are any of the systems used in
> American dictionaries. I 
> recognize that the general task of specifying a
> pronunciation that 
> speakers of any dialect will automatically speak in
> their dialect is not 
> ideally handled by IPA. However, I have do not know
> of any system 
> advocated by linguists other than what phonologists
> call "broad 
> transcription" using IPA. Can you point me to a book
> or paper, written 
> by linguists, that specifies such a system for
> English, and advocates 
> its use by and for general (non-academic) readers?
> 
> I have never encoutered such a system, and I doubt
> that one exists. 
> Barring the existence of a standard system, I don't
> really see that 
> Wikipedia has any other options besides IPA for
> specifying 
> pronunciations. Certainly I hope no one thinks
> Wikipedia should invent 
> its own system. When it comes to standards, it
> should be our job to 
> follow them and describe them, not create them.
> 
> So I advocate having IPA transcriptions for standard
> dialects (like 
> Standard American English and Received
> Pronunciation), and having 
> special pages describing how the various nonstardard
> dialects differ 
> both phonetically and phonemically from the
> standards. I don't know much 
> about morphophones and I'm not sure it's a concept
> widely accepted by 
> linguists.
> 
> PS: I have made a page on meta called
> [[Pronunciations]] and am going 
> through the list archives and posting links to
> relevant discussions 
> there. I'm not sure what the policy should be
> regarding where further 
> discussion should occur, so if you want to respond,
> do so either here or 
> on the list.
> 
> -- David [[User:Nohat]]

What about the system Nupedia uses?
LDan

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