I’m always annoyed when Wikipedia uses IPA to show how a word is pronounced, though I recognize that it’s a lot more precise than, say, spelling it in “phonetic” English or whatever - e.g. “sachet” = “sashay” (since those syllables could be pronounced differently by different English speakers). Most of the symbols I can suss out, but some I just give up on or look up if I have the time.
What sort of pronunciation scheme on Wikipedia would spare you the annoyance, then? One of the proprietary ones that each American publisher of dictionaries invents separately for itself? Which one should it be? As a matter of fact, Wikipedia has implemented its own American-style (dare I say “dumbed-down”?) pronunciation scheme to placate the IPA-phobes. Even though there was no need for them to bend over backward, they did. Of course, this scheme is only applied to English names and words, only using the limited set of English phonemes. It would be useless for world languages in general.
Wikipedia links all its IPA pronunciations to each symbol individually, and each of those comes with an audio file. You can get all the information you need with a click in less than 30 seconds. How annoying, right?
Better yet, use Wiktionary (or any of a batch of other sources), and get an audio link to the pronunciation of the word in question. No need to assemble the sounds of the individual symbols, or to click on each one separately. What you want to know is how the word’s pronounced, right? The IPA business makes sense in situations in which an audio file’s not available; but when audio files are available, why not go straight to one of the whole word?
If you’re communicating in a written medium, using written characters makes more sense than links to audio files for every pronunciation you mention. Links to audio files can be useful as additional information, but not as substitutes to transcription.
You’re right, except that Mama Zappa said she was reading Wikipedia, not Wiktionary… I was trying to meet her where she was at. There are occasional Wikipedia articles with whole word audio files, but not enough yet. I sensed her saying that she understood most of the symbols, but would get “annoyed” at seeing the occasional one she didn’t know yet.
I really appreciate Wiktionary, though, and like to see it getting some love. It includes depth of information that the more popular sites like dictionary.com often lack, as well as covering worldwide languages, not just English.