Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Why don’t more dictionaries use IPA?

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
30 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3
Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4679 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 25 of 30
15 April 2014 at 2:45am | IP Logged 
US-made dictionaries don't use IPA but respellings,
it seems native speakers like respellings better ;)


French-English, French-German dictionaries use IPA symbols,
but their phonological approach is very different from the
actual Parisien pronunciation (phonetic values of sounds) of today.

I don't see purpose of phonology-based IPA.

If actual phonetic values are not important, then, for many languages there are better alternatives to IPA symbols (Pinyin phonological system of Mandarin, and Kana of Japanese).

Portuguese and Italian don't really need IPA symbols in dictionaries,
all you need to know whether stressed o and e's are close or open,
and all native dictionaries of Italian and Portuguese show them like this:

stélla or stella (é)
estrela (ê)

Edited by Medulin on 15 April 2014 at 3:04am

1 person has voted this message useful



Ganzpret
Newbie
United States
Joined 4331 days ago

7 posts - 10 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Ancient Egyptian

 
 Message 26 of 30
18 June 2014 at 4:35am | IP Logged 
Too many stupid people in the world, there's your answer.

Edited by Ganzpret on 18 June 2014 at 4:39am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Tollpatchig
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4018 days ago

161 posts - 210 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Maltese

 
 Message 27 of 30
26 September 2014 at 6:56pm | IP Logged 
I can't read IPA so it just looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to me. I just try to imitate native speakers or use "prow-nunn-see-ay-shun". Knock it all you want but I can say the words and that's all that counts in by book.
1 person has voted this message useful



daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4532 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 28 of 30
02 October 2014 at 4:04pm | IP Logged 
Tollpatchig wrote:
I can't read IPA so it just looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to
me. I just try to imitate native speakers or use "prow-nunn-see-ay-shun". Knock it all
you want but I can say the words and that's all that counts in by book.


It gets problematic when your target language uses sounds that don't exist in your native
language. You might even hear the wrong sound because of the automatic approximation
process going on in your brain (ie. mapping to known sounds), so imitating native
speakers doesn't always work. IPA transcriptions plus a guide on how to pronounce the
different IPA symbols helps in that case. IPA is easy to learn (at least passively), it's
just another alphabet.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Doitsujin
Diglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5331 days ago

1256 posts - 2363 votes 
Speaks: German*, English

 
 Message 29 of 30
02 October 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged 
@Tollpatchig: Gabriel Wyner has created two well-done, foolproof videos that explain the IPA symbols for French.

French Video 1: The French Consonants and the IPA
French Video 2: The French Vowels

(As a byproduct, he also teaches the IPA symbols of many English consonants and vowels.)

Note that many vowels used in French also exist in German (and other languages). For example:

French rue [ʀy] vs. German Tür [ty:ɐ̯]
French bleu [blø] vs. German blöd [b:t]

Edited by Doitsujin on 02 October 2014 at 7:18pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Tollpatchig
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4018 days ago

161 posts - 210 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Maltese

 
 Message 30 of 30
02 October 2014 at 5:57pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
Tollpatchig wrote:
I can't read IPA so it just looks like a bunch of chicken scratch to
me. I just try to imitate native speakers or use "prow-nunn-see-ay-shun". Knock it all
you want but I can say the words and that's all that counts in by book.


It gets problematic when your target language uses sounds that don't exist in your native
language. You might even hear the wrong sound because of the automatic approximation
process going on in your brain (ie. mapping to known sounds), so imitating native
speakers doesn't always work. IPA transcriptions plus a guide on how to pronounce the
different IPA symbols helps in that case. IPA is easy to learn (at least passively), it's
just another alphabet.


I should say that imitation is the best way for *me* to learn how to say words. I'm sure that IPA is a very helpful tool and it may in fact be easy to learn. But I tend to not remember what is said in pronuncation guides but I can remember how a native said the word. I simply remember things better from context and by doing, I can review flashcards in Anki and I'll struggle to remember words but if I see that word later in a sentence and I say "hey that was one of my words" and I look up the meaning, it's more solid in my mind and I can recall that word better. Same with pronunciation, after reading and hearing various words said by natives I start to figure out patterns and match letters to sounds.


1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 30 messages over 4 pages: << Prev 1 2 3

If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3906 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.