[WikiEN-l] Pronunciation guides

Tue Jul 22 18:41:06 UTC 2003

--- Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com> wrote:
> This is where English, I think is in the minority,
> and will typically tend
> to reject like the metric system any attempt at
> mundification.  So typically
> English sounds arent it - and neither are SAMPA
> eugh!  (There was an
> interesting booktv talk on the origins of the
> American units system, btw --
> and why today people in the US look at the metric
> system in a xenophobic and
> skeptical way)

Well, not *all* Americans think that, but a
significant number of them do so that no polititions
in office want to make the change.

> I challenge anyone to show us here a scheme that is
> both easy to read (SAMPA
> eugh) and gives all the sonic description that these
> attempt to. In the end,
> the sonic descriptors are practically irrelevant
> when they get into too much
> detail -- regardless of how accurately you interpret
> the signs, youre still
> going to speak the foreign word with your particular
> accent.  And its going
> to be wrong.  The merits of the Roman alphabet are
> that its fairly standard,
> covers quite enough ground -- is modifyable in
> slight ways (ie pinyin,
> romaji.... SAMPA eugh!)

eugh? The way you use it, it sounds bad, but I don't
see what's wrong with SAMPA. I don't see why we have
the need for a "readable" system in the first place. 
If you mean "readable" as in "looks similar to English
spelling", you're out of luck. Even the most complex
system cannot match the utter irrationality of English
spelling.

> Still, where phonetic descriptions are used, some
> direction toward an
> international standard is a good idea.
> -S-

Exactly. And the other systems have been developed
over several years by phonetics professors. We could
never do better than them. Oh, yeah, we do have
professors here. But it would still be hard to do well
at making a complex system like this.

-LittleDan

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