[WikiEN-l] IPA issues

[stevertigo]

Joseph Reagle <joseph.2008 at reagle.org> wrote:
> I've never been able to. I always hoped that the theory was that > from the IPA, you could translate it into some scheme that
> would make sense in different vernaculars, but I never found
> the IPA -> English pronunciation link.

Well let's face it that most of linguistics looks esoteric to
monoglots and overcomplicated by specialized terminology.

English vowels are morphophonetic (c*ake, w*alk, c*at) wheras Latin
ones are not (torta*, ca*mina*r, ga*to), and that seems to constitute
the bulk of complexity regarding pronunciation of English in IPA.

For IPA beginners, I recommend just learning the *vowels - you can get
away with using English consonants anyway and vowel differences fall
along the lines of English vs. Latin's alphaphonetic pronunciations.

For expediency's sake, I'll agree that the rest is of IPA is mostly Chinese.

-Steve