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

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Jan 18, 2008 6:25 AM, 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.

IPA is, technically, automatically convertible to correct speech by
software. Phonetic spellings won't be.

None of the existing free software speech syntheizers that I am aware
of support IPA as a phonetic input format currently.  I spend a couple
of hours trying to write a IPA->festival phonetic converter, but my
own lack of understand of IP (and phonetic representations) got in the
way.

This really should be done, not only would it improve the ease and
coverage of getting a pronouncation but it would also reduce the risk
of IPA vandalism.

(If you search the archives you should be able to find me talking
about this a couple times in the past, ... I can't be bothered right
now.)