Re: Not phonetic but ___???

I have no French-English dictionnary at hand just now,
but AFAIK, such dictionnaries usually give the
supposed pronunciation for the English word, in IPA.
They won't give any possible pronunciation in every
dialect. So why not stick to this IPA representation
as a convenient way to figure the "standard"
pronunciation ? (and then learn dialects later, if
needed). I'm sure that they can give a good, average
pronunciation of words like "hat", "father" or "car".
If some prefer to pronounce them like "hot", "feather"
and "care", well, it's up to them...

The question is of course, what dialect the makers of
the dictionnary chose. Well, they probably thought
about that themselves, and there must be some reason
why they decided to choose such or such pronunciation
as a standard. If the differences are too important
now between English from England, USA or Australia,
that probably means that English is going to diverge
into several different languages. Nobody would refer
to Quebecois as a model for French standard
pronunciation: it is Quebecois pronunciation. And
already when you get a book in French translated from
American English, it is usually specified "traduit de
l'americain", or at least "traduit de l'anglais
(americain)".

--- Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> Indeed.  But you need to represent every single
> phoneme in every
> single(widespread, native) dialect.  That is the
> nature of the quest.
> So, while, essentially, taking a referent
> dialect(probably British
> English, if I was doing it), you would have to add
> symbols for the
> disctinction between the sounds in <car>, <father>,
> and <grass>, even
> though there is none in my dialect.  If you were
> taking an American
> dialect, you'd have to represent the difference
> between the vowel in
> <grass> and that in <hat>, though there is no
> distinction in American
> English, there is in some dialects of British
> English and New Zealand
> English(I believe).  That's the only example I know
> first hand.  It is
> by no means an impossibility to construct a
> dialect-neutral, phonemic
> orthography.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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