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

[Steve Bennett]

On 1/19/08, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> c) we insist on using IPA rather than "pronounced KO-tay".
>
> c) is kind of the sticking point. Very few people are confident and
> competent with IPA; to most of us, it is at best something that we
> encounter in dictionaries and try not to think too hard about. This
> means that our editors aren't likely to add it (because they don't
> feel comfortable using it, and certainly don't want to spend fifteen
> minutes with a lookup table and some incomprehensible runes to get a
> valid word), and that our readers aren't likely to use it even if it's
> there.
>
> But we don't have much option! Anything else is simply ineffective for
> a project with such a wide and diffuse base of contributors and users
> - saying "rhymes with X" or some kind of phonetic spelling is only
> reliable if we assume that everyone pronounces X, or interprets those
> syllables, the same way.

[I have a linguistics degree with a whole subject worth of phonetics,
so I am Qualified To Speak On The Subject]

IPA *is* hard. It's a real bitch to write in wikitext, it's not easy
to get right, and people don't even want it. I also don't think it's
appropriate for expressing the pronunciation of English
names/words/places, because they should really be given in a phonemic
pronunciation (eg, the pronounciation of "Prahran" should only
communicate to the reader that it's puh-RAN, without describing the
Australian accent as well). IPA is probably the best tool for foreign
words though.

So, for non-IPA contexts, rhyming is good. We Australians are well
used to seeing American rhyming schemes given. Sometimes it's odd - I
saw a pronunciation for "boffin" given as "BAW-fuhn", but we get the
gist. People play up the differences in regional accent far too much -
all we're trying to communicate is the rough structure of the name,
what syllables are stressed, whether "Reibl" is an "ee" or an "eye"
sound.

> [This is also the reason why giving dictionary-style definitions for
> normal nouns - "tomato" - would rapidly fall over; too much local
> variation. Names and other proper nouns have a "right" pronunciation

Giving a pronunciation for a common English word is a bad idea. Giving
a pronunciation for a rarer word, like "gilliflower" is helpful.

In summary:
- Only provide pronuncations where it's actually helpful or there is
an ambiguity
- Use IPA for foreign words, some rhyming scheme for English words

Steve