[WikiEN-l] IPA issues

[Emily Monroe]

Of course, this requires people actually learn the IPA. This is more  
difficult for some than others; neuroatypicalities can make it harder  
or easier, and polyglots can probably learn a lot easier. I don't know  
if it translates well into braille. I wish I did.

I'm concerned that those who can or do have a lot of difficulty  
learning the IPA will be "left out" if we end up depending on this.

Emily
On Apr 21, 2010, at 7:04 PM, stevertigo wrote:

> 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 [ˈɛɪjaˌfjatla 
> ˌjœːkʏtl̥],
> 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
>
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