On 18/01/2008, Thomas Dalton
<thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1/18/08, John Lee <johnleemk(a)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]