[Wikipedia-l] The value of Pronunciation

[Arwel Parry]

Stan Shebs wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> The idea is that you cannot reliably pronounce a word as it it 
>>> should be pronounced just by seeing the characters when the word 
>>> originated from another language. By making these resources 
>>> available, it is clear how they should be pronounced in the original 
>>> language. Having pronunciations available is important because they 
>>> help people study a language and, the wikipedia articles are a great 
>>> resource to learn a language; they are short, cover a subject well 
>>> and many of the related words related to a subject can be found in 
>>> the article.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> This could be nightmarish in English - accents are widely variant and
>> in Britain are used as markers of social status to a ridiculous degree.
>> This is of course highly politicised. I confidently predict ten or more
>> sound files per word.
>
>
> It used to be said that an experts in English could get to within
> 50 miles of a person's birthplace just by listening to the dialect.
> Dunno if that's still true in this more mobile age. In any case,
> supplying the life background of the speaker is critical, just
> like identifying the location of a picture, and I hope everybody
> is doing that for uploaded pronunciations.

50 miles? Even in these more mobile days that's nothing. For some 
communities, real experts could locate a persons' accent down to a few 
streets.

-- 
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/