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International Phonetic Alphabet for all? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Parlero Triglot Newbie Spain Joined 6455 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Italian, Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 12 25 August 2009 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
Sorry if this is the wrong forum. I was checking some old threads about the adequacy (or not) of the Latin alphabet to other languages, specifically Chinese, etc. Both sides presented good reasons to maintain their current systems. But what about trying to use the IPA for every language on Earth? I know, I know, impossible for cultural and/or nationalistic reasons (which can be valid, of course). But just dreaming...IPA has more symbols than the Latin alphabet, but way less symbols that Chinese and others. It was specifically designed to represent sound particles, in principle any human language sound, even to the point of recording (if desired) pronunciation variants of the same word. I think it would be ideal, and not too hard. So I suggest that IPA is the answer! (In a perfect world, defined by me being the God Emperor of Earth, of course) So, the God Emperor awaits your comments. Don't let him wait! PS: Take it easy, no attack intended to your particular tribe/totem/ego... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6436 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes  Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 12 25 August 2009 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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IPA cannot record Korean correctly. Period.
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| Parlero Triglot Newbie Spain Joined 6455 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Italian, Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 3 of 12 25 August 2009 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi, All korean sounds? A majority of them? Some? A few? Are Korean sounds so different, really? Just want to know. Perhaps an extended IPA could be the solution? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| karaipyhare Tetraglot Groupie Paraguay Joined 5585 days ago 74 posts - 150 votes Speaks: Portuguese, Spanish*, English, Guarani Studies: German, Italian, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 12 25 August 2009 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Could you please comment more about the topic? Which sounds? Why aren't they correctly represented? I would like to know more about Korean phonetics. Tried to start learning Korean twice but never found a good explanation of the sounds. And I'm a fanatic of IPA and understand it very well 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6436 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 12 25 August 2009 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, my statement was a bit abrupt and rude.. must apologize.. :(
They did make extensions to the IPA, and with those you can record Korean sounds. But using Hangul is a lot more convenient. The problem with using IPA arises from the fact that what is recorded as two different sounds in IPA, could be recorded as one sound in a given language. For example, in Korean we have three similar consonants. ㅂ - IPA /p/ or /b/, depending on situation ㅃ - IPA /p͈/ ㅍ - IPA /pʰ/ No problem with the second and third, but the problem arises with the first one. If we mark that consonant with IPA, that means KOREANS would have to relearn their vocabulary to suit IPA. For your information, we have 4 such groupings of consonants. We'll all have to be fluent in phonetics, whehter it be learning a foreign language or even your own language. Think about recording dialects in IPA while you're at it.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 12 25 August 2009 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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It wouldn't work -- in many languages words or morphemes interact with each other, leading to sound changes. A script that was 100% phonetic would make spelling vastly more complicated.
You don't pronounce the S in the French "vous" normally, but you do when you say "vous avez". And in English, you've got the suffix -ed, which is different in (for example) slatted, ripped and ribbed. Closer to home, you have the difference between intervocalic and non-intervocalic consonants in Spanish: hablar has erre but hablaré has ere. I don't know whether it's universal or not, but when the Gipsy Kings sing "no volveré", the "v" is sung as intervocalic because "no" is sung as though it's not a separate word, so you would have to spell "volveré" and "no volveré" differently. This would be a nightmare. Most native speakers of French aren't fully conscious of their liaison; most native speakers of English can read an -ed word and pronounce it properly without thinking, but if you ask them to think about it, they're lost; and most speakers of Spanish make a vocalic/intervocalic distinction on many consonants, but are only aware of it in the R, or the D (when they slag off people for saying they're from "Madriz"). Every language is different, so we make conventions for writing that suit our individual languages. There can be no single standard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Parlero Triglot Newbie Spain Joined 6455 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Italian, Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 7 of 12 25 August 2009 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that it would actually be an advantage, expression-wise. Consider: some guy wants to write a novel in Spanish. He can use IPA to write the novel in whatever he thinks is the "standard" Spanish pronunciation, or he can write it with, say, Argentinean Spanish pronunciation. Both are intelligible to a Spanish-speaking person, and in the second case it could add a "regional flavor effect" similar to listening to an Argentinean movie... So, yes, harder in the phonetic sense, but also much more expressive, and universal, than what we have now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Parlero Triglot Newbie Spain Joined 6455 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Italian, Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 8 of 12 25 August 2009 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Mmm... I see what you mean. Tough. But I think that, in practice, they wouldn't record their speech with 100% accuracy, but only with as much detail as they want, which can give you a high degree of versatility. That is, IPA would allow very high quality "recording", but most of the time you'll use "medium quality", which would still work quite well. Somewhat unsatisfactory, but I think he universality of IPA is worth that disadvantage. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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