OT: Foreign Language Books using IPA

I was browsing through the language section at Barnes & Noble the other
day. I took Spanish in high school and always wanted to try picking up
French, but I didn't have room in my schedule for the extra language class
and the pronunciation was very difficult to pick up soley from a textbook.

Today I got to thinking, why don't foreign language textbooks use the IPA
as a pronunciation guide? The usual system that I've seen, where the book
will spell the words using English spelling rules, is unreliable because
sometimes a native English speaker can't even pronounce a new English word
correctly without consulting a friend or a dictionary.

Okay, so I probably already know the answer why they don't have such
textbooks -- students would complain of having to learn a new system of
transcribing in addition to a new language. But after the first time, they
could confidently pronounce new words in any other foreign language
textbooks. ... Ah well. </rant>

But my real question is this: Does anyone know of a textbook on learning a
foreign language (any will do, really) that uses the IPA rather than
pseudo-English?


--
Arthaey

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