Dragaera

Pronunciation Guide

David Dyer-Bennet dd-b at dd-b.net
Tue Oct 21 16:19:54 PDT 2003

rone at ennui.org (roger n. tospott) writes:

> David Dyer-Bennet writes:
>   We need a good system for representing the pronunciations in text
>   form.  For various reasons I don't think the IPA is a good choice --
>   mostly that the people looking up these pronunciations won't be
>   familiar with it, and it presents a rather large learning curve.
> 
> What do you mean by "IPA"?

International Phonetic Alphabet.  I think it's what professionals use
when they're dealing with these issues.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet>. 

> I like the pronunciation guide at m-w.com; it seems fairly simple and
> effective.

But probably not public-domain.  Actually it's more complicated than I
really wanted; I notice a number of cases where they can't even find
an English word to illustrate the sound.  And what's with arbitrarily
reversing the symbols \o\ and \&auml;\ -- they seem to be used to
indicate the opposite of what makes sense (the o used to indicate
modified a sounds, the a used to indicate the common o sound).  

Although this may be one of those situations where we should make it
as simple as possible, and no simpler; I may be trying to make it
simpler than is possible.  But the big thing that bugs me about IPA
beyond the complexity is that they don't use any of the obvious
associations, they always find some weird way to do it.  This is
probably to make it less English-specific; but since my audience is
specifically English-speakers (the web site isn't in any other
languages),  that's a drawback for me. 

Hmmm; I suppose it might be possible to use the MW system by
reference, not copying anything.  Maybe.  Or maybe I'll have to invent
one in the end anyway.  
-- 
David Dyer-Bennet, <dd-b at dd-b.net>, <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <noguns-nomoney.com> <www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Photos: <dd-b.lighthunters.net>  Snapshots: <www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <dragaera.info/>