Re: Pronunciation dictionaries?

On Apr 20, 5:20 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Peter T. Daniels skreiv:





On Apr 20, 2:34 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Christian Weisgerber skreiv:

Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@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?)

[...]

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.

That is NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST what I'm talking about.

The standard American pronunciation key uses macron, breve,
circumflex, and dieresis to make all the necessary vowel
distinctions, and in some instances it does it without respelling the
words (my school King James Bible from 1958 gives pronunciations for
all the unfamiliar names right in the text).

Sorry about that. I didn't know of a third system. I can see that added
dots and lines can help to identify syllables and distinguish between
homographs and thus serve as a guide to pronunciation within an oddly
spelt language like English, but how could that system work for
languages that differ from English in phonetics and ortography?

THAT'S THE POINT. The 19th-century American dictionary phonetic
symbols were devised FOR THE PRONUNCIATION OF (AMERICAN) ENGLISH.

The vowels called in English "long a," "long e," etc., i.e., the ones
that "say their names," are written with macron. Remember, we had the
GEV and no one else did, so ordinary people don't associate letters
with their Latinate ( > IPA) values, so IPA is particularly confusing
for the English-reader.

And, if Americans learn a better system in school, why does Berlitsh
exist at all? Do you export stuff that's not allowed on the home market?
Is that legal under international trade law?

By "Berlitsh," do you mean "phonetic respelling"? One big reason it
exists is that the American dictionary symbols (such as <oo> with
macron or breve) are not generally available -- initially on
typewriters, and now in ordinary fonts.
.

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