Re: Pronunciation dictionaries?

Christian Weisgerber skreiv:

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A student of English needs to be able to use the pronunciation keys
found in English dictionaries, which except for the (new) OED, isn't
IPA. (Has IPA been inflicted on the whole family of smaller Oxford
dictionaries?)

My old Oxford Advanced Learner's, "revised and reset" in 1985,
certainly uses IPA--and anything else would have been very surprising
in this part of the world.

Pronunciations were rendered in IPA symbols in my first English school book in fourth grade -- some 30 years ago. Moreover, as (despised boring) homework we maintained our own glossaries in small notebooks where we copied every new word with spelling to the left and pronunciation to the right. Four years later it was the same procedure with French. We never got IPA explained, though. I think we were meant to pick up a rough value of each symbol along the way but not to be able to write it.

Seen from here, non-IPA pronunciation keys are a bizarre American atavism, much like pounds and inches.

And serving sizes ... Nevertheless. This bizarre American atavism is getting increasingly common in undertranslated pocket dictionaries and travel guides to exotic places like sher-NAYV or KAHR-law-vee VAH-ree. (I used to see it as an excuse for the parodic accent of American tourists, but now I must admit that it's far worse when spoken loud by a Norwegian.) The last few years I've even seen American pronunciation spelling in online newspaper articles that are translated from syndicated American material.

--
Trond Engen
- from SHEE-un, NAWR-gay
.

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