[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Suggestion: Pronunciation on all names

[Charlotte Webb]

On 1/18/08, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/01/2008, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/18/08, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On a related note, it would be helpful if we, you know, used a
> > > pronunciation guide that makes sense to most English-speaking people.
> > > The IPA thing is nonsense, and I have never been able to glean more
> > > than bits of redundant pronunciation information from it.
> >
> > Agreed. IPA is great for people that know it, so it's worth including,
> > but a simple phonetic spelling should also be provided, or even just a
> > "rhymes with X".
>
> But how do you pronounce word X?   English pronunciation varies very,
> very widely (even in tiny England the range of pronunciation of simple
> words like "rub" and "new" is quite large) At least IPA has
> consistency, and if I really need to know what those funny squiggles
> mean I can click on the link in the template to see exactly that.

I agree. As long as there exists a system with some degree of
widespread acceptance we should build upon it rather than against
it.[1]

I noticed one user's tool which apparently adds hovering "help text"
to help interpret IPA symbols, e.g. <span title="fOOd">u</span>, which
might be worth experimenting with.[2]

On the other hand if the constructed IPA is more consistent than *any*
natural language, wouldn't it be relatively easy for a machine to read
it, aloud?

—C.W.

[1] This may be why Citizendium is a colossal waste of bandwidth and
Veropedia is slightly interesting. :p
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nohat/IPA.js