--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> wrote:
Anthere wrote in part:
We should have sounds in wiktionary...
to be NPOV, each word would have to respect each
pronunciation :-)
I'd suggest developing a morphophonic system for
each language.
Then the transcription can link to a page that
explains
how the morphophones correspond to phonemes (even
phones)
in some major dialects. But the morphophones don't
play favourites
(and you can always keep adding to the list of
"major" dialects).
I explained briefly what morphophones are in a
previous post.
The classic reference seems to be: Smith, Henry Lee,
Jr.;
1967; The Concept of the Morphophone; Language
43:3:306-341.
I should look that up if I'm going to talk much
more. ^_^
And...I pronounce nuclear, newclear :-(((
What you don't realise is that /everybody/
pronounces "nuclear" as "newclear".
It is "new" itself that's pronounced "nyoo" /nju:/
in some dialects
and "noo" /nu:/ in others. This is the English
morphphone .long-u..
-- Toby
There already is a morphophonic system for English
that is used in most (or atleast several) dictionaries
(I know atleast Webster). The only problem is that it
uses strange accent marks and does very poorly with
non-leading r's. Word/phrases like "going to" don't
fair well either. I don't really see how any
morphophonic system can deal with the wide range
between /g@n@/ and /goIN tu/, and in some cases, we
will need to write multiple pronunciations anyway.
Where I live, there are two towns, Chili and
Charlotte, which are pronounced completely differently
than a normal New York state accent would prescribe.
We pronounce them /tSailai/ and /Sar\l'at/
respectively, whereas people from elsewhere pronounce
it /tSIli/ and /'Sar\lIt/. There is no regular pattern
for this. I tried to develope a morphophonic system
while at camp but encountered these problems (but it
can do what the current system can do without accent
marks).
In any event, it would be very confusing for readers
to have a pronounciation system unique to wikipedia
that they'd have to learn.
-LittleDan
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