Re: XSAMPA Question

Quoting Gary Shannon:

"Since every thread turns into a pronunciation thread in 3 to 5 posts, I suppose I
might as well try to learn something about phonology. I'm not sure why I've
never had any interest in it, except that I see it as largely irrelevant, since
mutual comprehension seems to be maintained over a very broad range of
pronunciation variations.

Usually, that intelligibility is retained. But sometimes such a thing doesn't exist...
And check out this link, if you like, for a short discussion of language
intelligibility:
http://home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/mutual.htm .

"But more to the point, where do I go to find out how those XSAMPA things are
pronounced. If followed a lot of Google links, but all I got was things like
"close front unrounded" which means about as much to me as "top green
polyester". Is there a site that actually explains the difference between close
front unrounded and top green polyester?"

Absolutely! XSAMPA and stuff confuse me, and there's nowhere that I've found where all the
sounds are carefully explained, for the non-linguist. It's extremely
frustrating!!!!!!!

--Trebor