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July 15, 2005 The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a very convenient tool for unilingual and bilingual lexicographers, which, however, is largely ignored in the US. If you consult a typical American dictionary for the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word, you are very likely to see some of the sounds represented by such nonsensical combinations as ‘ah’, ‘oo’. ‘aw’, ‘ng’, ‘th’, ‘sh’ and the like, not one of which represents a sound that has anything to do with the component letters. It wouldn’t be so bad if all the dictionaries agreed on what, for example ‘oo’ or ‘ie’ stands for, but it seems that every dictionary, be it American Heritage, Webster’s, Columbia, Infoplease, or whatever, has its own scheme, which will agree in some particulars and disagree in some particulars with every other scheme, with the result that you have to consult the key, unless you memorize a dozen schemes. Maybe this has to do with proprietary rights or copyrights or some other thorny legal problem, but to me it’s a nuisance. One who consults the Oxford English Dictionary, however, will find that it uses the IPA, which is the same scheme that is used by the major bilingual lexicographers like Cassell’s and Larousse, and usually by universities that publish textbooks on foreign languages. The fact of the matter is that several foreign languages have such good orthography that the pronunciation of a word does not have to be shown separately. Examples would be Spanish, Greek and German. But for such languages as require an assist, the IPA is almost always the scheme that is used. So if you pick up a French, Italian or Portuguese dictionary, those words that need explication will usually have it in the iPA. Moreover, the IPA is so flexible and comprehensive that it can be used with languages widely diverging phonetically from western languages, like Chinese, Russian and Arabic. It has all the symbols for emphatic consonants, palatalizations, tones, everything. Of course, it uses a lot of symbols that do not appear in Microsoft Word, even in the “Symbol” dropdown that you can open when you have clicked on “Insert”. On the other hand, an “oo” with a superscript crescent or macron does not appear there either. But American dictionaries keep using them nonetheless. The IPA is supposed to be capable of accurate representation of all known languages. In fact, some of the letters exist only because they have been found in a single language or very small number of languages. For the most widely known languages, a subset of 50 or 60 letters will do. You don’t have to memorize every symbol. But once you know the IPA, you can pick up the OED or Cassell’s or a college textbook and read the pronunciation right off. If you are working with half a dozen dictionaries, they will all agree. Anyway, contemplation and comprehension of the alphabet in itself is edifying. Who would deny that men are men instead of beasts simply because they can speak and cooperate? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/15/IPA_chart_2005.png ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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