[WikiEN-l] IPA issues

[stevertigo]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's the point of using a phonetic alphabet that 95% of our
> readership can't interpret? If the idea is to help readers understand
> how a word is pronounced in English, it should actually be useful to
> the majority of readers and not largely useless but academically
> perfect.

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Emily Monroe <bluecaliocean at me.com> wrote:
> I'd have to agree with you, Nathan. I can't read IPA to save my life!

The idea behind IPA is, that there be a single standard alphabet that
everyone can use which can help us all communicate a bit better when
speaking a new language or just using a term from another language.
It's basic and encyclopedic information and should be included.
Consider a word we've all seen recently: Eyjafjallajökull, which
apparently just means "island-mountain glacier" (I suggest that
"Eyja-fjalla glacier" is the sensible English translation). It's not
necessary that anyone pronounce it exactly as [ˈɛɪjaˌfjatlaˌjœːkʏtl̥],
still its basic information about the name itself.  A name is a key
into a concept, and a foreign name is a key into a foreign concept. We
don't omit basic information just because it gives us too much of a
window into strange and foreign ways of conceptualization that we just
don't understand.

The issue of accessibility is valid, but I can answer that by
understating IPA's usability as flexible, ranging from the basic to
the expert. Most people I imagine start with learning few of the IPA
vowels, and the consonants are mostly intuitive. Being flexible means
that its also quite forgiving, and that anyone who makes an honest
attempt at writing in IPA is making a contribution, even if they are
politely corrected here and there by someone a bit more.. 1337.

I agree that IPA can seem a bit cumbersome and even ambiguous when
used at extreme detail (ie. it gets into reproducing whole
foreign-language phonologies at a single-word level, which isn't
always useful nor necessary). At least I can understand why it's not
universally accepted and used on our foreign encyclopedias, namely
that its still a bit esoteric enough for us on en. Nevertheless its,
again, encyclopedic and necessary.

-Stevertigo