[WikiEN-l] IPA issues

[Nathan]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Oops, if the world contradicts the list and a WP article, the world is
> out of step?
>
> Anyway, not much googling on TEFL and IPA needed to find this quote:
>
> "Pronunciation guidance is a major feature of leading EFL dictionaries
> such as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) and the Longman
> Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE), which are regularly revised
> and updated. These and authoritative pronunciation-only dictionaries
> such as Wells (2000) make use of IPA symbols to indicate pronunciation."
>
> Charles


I just assumed that if IPA were widely used, someone might have
mentioned that in previous iterations of the arguments over its use.
Perhaps that assumption is a mistake, if the limit of research done by
IPA advocates is cherry picking Google search results. (Of course that
comment is unfair, but then again, so was your characterisation of my
previous post).

Even the IPA article mentions that EFL references use pronunciation
guides. That doesn't equate to wide usage of IPA specifically, since
both your quote above and the article suggests that IPA is a minority
of these guides. In your quick Google search, did you find anything to
contradict that?

Nathan