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English publishers don’t use IPA? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4867 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 9 of 26 06 October 2012 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
But now they are used in a certain number of countries and have a strict value. 10 is not better than twelve. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5073 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 10 of 26 06 October 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am not saying they are fools. How many average, non-linguist, Russians (or French, or Spanish or Dutch for that matter) are familiar with the IPA? When a business is selling a product like language learning material, it must appeal to a broad consumer base. The IPA was developed by linguists in order to have an international standard for pronunciation. It would be useful for people to know it, however; it is not essential. I didn't use it and I did alright. For most monolingual people, learning a language is a daunting enough task. A language with a different script is doubly so. Add in IPA as well and just kiss your market goodbye. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4867 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 11 of 26 06 October 2012 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I didn't say they were fools either. I said such an attempt treats them in such a way. Many people who learned English are familiar with IPA, all the modern textbooks of English and dictionaries teach it. It is so much easier to learn the IPA symbols used for English than to understand how to pronounce a given English word. I remember I wondered why the English couldn’t write everything in IPA. Of course by IPA I mean an adopted to a certain language system. And one can use another system but it must be consistent and simple. That’s what many textbooks fail to do. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5264 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 12 of 26 06 October 2012 at 6:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard and 1760 yards in a mile. Wonderful system. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4639 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 13 of 26 06 October 2012 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh dear oh dear. Number favouritism. There is something intrinsically better about 10 than about 12? If we are going to play that game, 12 has more factors, and one third of 12 is a whole number. Plus I don't care what "feet" they use in other countries. The foot in the Imperial System is well defined, and that's what we use here. (We used to have a shilling of 12 pence, so English children used to grow up being quite good at factorising and dividing 12 (and 20 as there were 20 shillings in a pound), and being quite familiar with the relevant fractions. Similarly 16 (ounces in a pound). (I guess Danish children grow up quite good at multiples and fractions of 20 ) Is it any coindidence that we started going down hill once we decimalised coinage, and started selling petrol in lires? I think not ... ) [There is a better reason for preferring traditional units of measurement though, and that is because they are - familiar, and meaningful for the people who use them. I believe the Germans still referred to half a kg as a "Pfund" and still used it until relatively recently, and maybe still do in small shops selling things where that is a useful quantity.] We also use the inch and the yard, but we also use the metric system where appropriate. In science and Engineering of course, but also nowadays in building, but also buying material for making clothes, or a length of wire, or things like that. I still ask for my meat by the pound in my local butcher, although he is required by law to weigh it in kg and show the price in kg, but it's no big deal really. In other words, we are pretty adaptable, but many of us still prefer the old units for everyday use, so in a way I agree with you. There is actually no excuse for course books not to show IPA and if they want to show a more "familiar" (if not very accurate) "everyday" notation, then they could do that as well. They should probably teach IPA at school, but...well, as far as I know they don't. I was quite annoyed a little while ago by my "Teach Yourself Complete Danish", and they wrote that the "ek" in "seksten" was pronounced "I". I thought they uppercased the "i" to emphasise that it wasn't an "e" sound, and I was pronouncing the "i" as in RP English "tin". When I checked on the audio CD I found what they meant was "I" as in the first person singular pronoun, i.e. like RP English "eye". I probably should have been more wide awake (or not so dumb) in the first place, but it shows where those approximate pronunciation guides can lead you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4639 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 26 06 October 2012 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There is one slightly practical factor against IPA which is that if printed small, some symbols can be quite hard to read, and that's what usually puts me off it in dictionaries, which are often printed small in any case.
Not so difficult for you young whippersnappers with 20/20 eyesight, but not so easy past mid-forties with less that perfect lighting conditions. And if the symbols are unfamiliar in the first place, well... I hope course designers would bear this in mind when using or considering using IPA. (And I don't find it particularly easy to cope with, as it happens. Maybe I am just thick, or it's a vision thing). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4867 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 15 of 26 06 October 2012 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's wonderful! This "easy" system is not clear even to native English speakers. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4518 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 16 of 26 06 October 2012 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The Dutch call 500g a pond and 100g an ons. Edited by tarvos on 06 October 2012 at 7:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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