[Wikipedia-l] policy suggestion: SAMPA

[Brion VIBBER]

Toby Bartels wrote:
> The wav file is fine (although it disagrees with the bracketed transcription).
> But it's obvious that this is just one person's pronunciation.
> Sure, it's obvious that the bracketed transcription is just one dialect,
> but why are we trying to claim more precision than is justified?
> There's no way for a recording to give less precision than
> the sound of a single, unique, ultimately unreproduceable utterance,
> but there's an easy way to make a phonetic transcription give less precision,
> and that's to use slashes to indicate that the transcription is phonemic.
> 
> Even that may be too precise for a language as broadly varying as English,
> but it should do in this case, and in many others.
> 
> And what dialect is that bracketed transcription supposed to be anyway?
> Or is the lack of aspiration on the [k] a mistake?

Alright, you caught me; stick with the phoneme slashes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)