# IPA in the SDMB **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [August 9, 2016, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291 "2016-08-09T23:55:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/41 "2016-08-10T20:04:06Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I concur. So what’s your solution for talking about pronunciation clearly and unambiguously? In pronunciation threads, it’s extremely helpful. In threads where pronunciation is just casually mentioned, perhaps not so much. The best solution so everyone is happy is to use both when possible. Why the irrational hatred towards IPA? It’s like trying to discuss how a musician plays a piece and saying musical notation is stupid or something. For those who don’t like it or say it’s the suxxors, please, suggest a clear, unambiguous alternative that works across languages and dialects. ---
**Author:** ![swampspruce](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/swampspruce/32/261_2.png) [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/42 "2016-08-10T22:06:39Z")
Mmm, bɪə(ɹ)! ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/43 "2016-08-10T23:45:05Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > The only other way to solve the problem, as far as I see it, is audio samples. What is stupid about it? I don’t really see any other way of unambiguously conveying phonemes across the whole spectrum of human languages other than IPA or a system similar to it. Please suggest these “other means” and reasons for why the people who came up with it are “idiots” and the system has “lethal levels of stupidity.” While I give my pronunciations in both IPA and layman’s language, the latter often requires a much more verbose description to try to accurately convey what sounds I am talking about. If you’re posting on the internet, as opposed to writing a book, it’s quite easy to link to an audio example. But you don’t need to. For 99% of cases, a VERY simple comparison, such as “the _a_ in father” or “rhymes with X” will suffice. You’re all hot and bothered about rare cases – cases that even people who are interested and/or need to know this sort of thing seldom come across. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/44 "2016-08-11T00:09:46Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > If you’re posting on the internet, as opposed to writing a book, it’s quite easy to link to an audio example. > > But you don’t need to. For 99% of cases, a VERY simple comparison, such as “the _a_ in father” or “rhymes with X” will suffice. You’re all hot and bothered about rare cases – cases that even people who are interested and/or need to know this sort of thing seldom come across. These are not rare cases. These are mires that a huge proportion of our pronunciation threads get caught in. “What do you mean, those don’t rhyme/Yes, they do!” There’s really no reason for it. Those who are comparing it to learning a completely new language are engaging in a type of hyperbole that amounts to nothing more than “Don’t make me learn anything new!” It’s petulant obstinate clinging to ignorance for basically no reason and for something that takes as little effort to learn as anything you will see addressed on these boards. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/45 "2016-08-11T00:20:44Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Whereas I can read the stuff about 1/4 the speed I can read written English – a little slower than my regular speaking pace but adequate for reading out loud. (And if it switches to Russian or Hungarian in the next paragraph, I can keep going, and I can read the IPA a helluva lot faster than I can read Russian or Hungarian!) > > **Anyway, what’s the alternative?** All other phonetic markup approaches are > > • less universally known > > • less consistent in how they are used within the same system (see ŏ versus ä for spot and father, respectively, in English dictionaries from the 1960s) > > • have too much overlap with symbols used in other contexts — ä in English is a very different thing from ä in German! True of IPA as well, I suppose, but it combines with “less universally known” to create phonetic chaos > … or, in the absence of any phonetic markup, you get conversations like this: > > “It’s pronounced like ‘walk’ except without the ‘l’ sound” > > “What ‘l sound’? You don’t pronounce walk with any kind of ‘l’ sound, it’s silent!” > > “The hell you say! If you didn’t pronounce the ‘l’, ‘walk’ would sound like ‘wok’ instead!” > > “No, the ‘a’ sound in ‘walk’ is nothing like the ‘o’ sound in ‘wok’!” > > emphasis added by me – **kd99** The alternative? How about I post my cell number in my profile? Anyone who wants to know how I pronounce something can just give me a call, and I’ll tell them. Easy peasy. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/46 "2016-08-11T01:31:40Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > If you’re posting on the internet, as opposed to writing a book, it’s quite easy to link to an audio example. > > But you don’t need to. For 99% of cases, a VERY simple comparison, such as “the _a_ in father” or “rhymes with X” will suffice. You’re all hot and bothered about rare cases – cases that even people who are interested and/or need to know this sort of thing seldom come across. It’s actually not all that rare here. I find myself having to be very precise in my explanation when using non-IPA terms because of things like the caught/cot and the merry/marry/Mary mergers. It shows up time and time again in pronunciation threads. From one of the pronunciation threads going on, a simple example is that a poster said a syllable was pronounced as the “aw” in “BRAWT-wurst.” I have never heard “bratwurst” pronounced with what I would call an “aw,” but I suspect their dialect is part of the caught/cot merger, so they don’t make a distinction between “aw” and “ah,” and that sound is what I would consider an “ah” sound. But I don’t know for certain. Maybe he does say it as “BRAWT-wurst” and not “BRAHT-wurst.” And then when you add non-rhotic accents in the mix, it gets even more confusing. British people will often spell out “r-colored” vowels with the “r” and, as an American, it confused me the first dozen times I saw this until it dawned on me that they were writing pronunciation in a non-rhotic accent and that the "R"s are not pronounced in their accent. I personally find that when writing to an international audience like this one that uses many types of English, it’s difficult to accurately convey what I mean by analogy and that the only accurate way to do it is either by audio sample (which I have done many times here) or through IPA. There really isn’t any other way, and IPA is not stupid but a very clever and precise way of communicating the sounds of speech. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/47 "2016-08-11T08:57:12Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > you mean it’s easily learned by children who are in the prime language-learning years of their lives? Ya don’t say! It’s not language-leaning. And I reckon most people who learn it are adults. There are people complaining in this thread who were complainng about it in the Odin thread in 2014. That they don’t know it by now is deliberate. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2016, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/48 "2016-08-11T11:07:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **kaylasdad99** : > > Translated into English: “Of course we should use IPA to post such things. It’s the standard.” > > It took me fully ten minutes to figure out how to translate that. Odd; it took me less than a minute. “sʌtʃ” gave me some problems at first, but ʌ was used previously in the sentence in a word I’d already figured out, and ʃ is clearly (from its appearance) a sound related to s but distinct from it, and I already knew that English “ch” is actually pronounced as “tsh”, so it all fell into place. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/49 "2016-08-12T11:31:30Z")
IPA is the only effective solution. Dopers are fascinated with each other’s pronunciation variants, which has inspired thousands of threads. I’ve been reading them since 1999 and have seen needless confusion get repeated over and over again due to this lack of shared medium for communicating phonetic information. While making IPA mandatory seems too extreme, I advocate that it must be strongly encouraged and supported. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/50 "2016-08-12T12:25:32Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > Translated into English: “_Of course we should use IPA to post such things. It’s the standard._” > > It took me fully ten minutes to figure out how to translate that. Not the most productive ten minutes of my life (in terms of enjoying my time on the Dope). Maybe if there was an online IPA-to-English translating utility we could copy and paste to. It’s already in English, so the correct term is _transliterate_. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I don’t think IPA usage should be mandated but I reserve the right to giggle behind my hand at people trying to compare pronunciations without using IPA or X-SAMPA or another phonetic notation system. As a linguist, I prefer the use of IPA to indicate pronunciation. I also do not think it should be mandated on this site. For those who do not know IPA, they can choose from any number of dictionary schemes. What I would ask for those who do that, of course, is to state which dictionary scheme they’re using (preferably one that’s available online and _not_ behind a pay wall). > [@Ruken](#): > > IPA is easily learned by elementary-school children (cite: my nephews.) If only it were a regular part of the curriculum. It’s day one (know it on day two; we’re not going over this again) of any intro to linguistics class. Anyone who understands its utility, is interested in discussing pronunciation, and refuses to understand it is deliberately ignorant and should not be accommodated. It’s also easily learned by quite a number of students in South Korea. The Korean-English dictionaries my students were using employed IPA to indicate the English pronunciation. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I will not object to a ban on IPA if we also ban mathematical notation. I come here for fun not for learns. Some of us think it’s fun to learn. > [@dracoi](#): > > My biggest problem with the IPA you write instead of drink: I would only use it when I’m typing, and it’s too much work to produce all the odd characters required by IPA. For that matter, I’m not even confident which applications will reliably reproduce those characters… which is maybe more of a 1996 concern than a 2016 one, but call me old-fashioned. If I’m e-mailing or posting, I want to be sure the recipient sees what I sent and I still don’t have that confidence with extended character sets. > > It would be much better for a system like IPA to use two- or three-letter combinations from the basic ASCII set. That might create some confusion if laymen misinterpret the pronunciation by making incorrect assumptions about the formal system, but at least it’s something they could make assumptions about. [url=[http://www.sil.org](http://www.sil.org) has a few programs available to enable one to type IPA. > [@Johanna](#): > > IPA is the only effective solution. Dopers are fascinated with each other’s pronunciation variants, which has inspired thousands of threads. I’ve been reading them since 1999 and have seen needless confusion get repeated over and over again due to this lack of shared medium for communicating phonetic information. While making IPA mandatory seems too extreme, I advocate that it must be strongly encouraged and supported. Agreed. When I began using IPA, I was quite pleased with how well it works. Is it perfect? Of course not. No writing system will perfectly represent sounds; however, the IPA is, IMHO, the best we have at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/51 "2016-08-12T12:34:07Z")
Sorry. I messed up the URL coding for [SIL](http://www.sil.org) above. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/52 "2016-08-12T13:12:49Z")
IPA looks like gibberish to me; I can’t read it. IMHO it might as well be Martian. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2016, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/53 "2016-08-12T15:09:35Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > IPA is the only effective solution. Dopers are fascinated with each other’s pronunciation variants, which has inspired thousands of threads. I’ve been reading them since 1999 and have seen needless confusion get repeated over and over again due to this lack of shared medium for communicating phonetic information. While making IPA mandatory seems too extreme, I advocate that it must be strongly encouraged and supported. Indeed. I understand it can be a bit daunting at first but, in threads that are about pronunciation, it helps to have a common language to talk about pronunciation. Just like we do in math, music, etc. If you’re genuinely interested in learning about pronunciations, it’s worth your while to learn IPA. And it’s deeply rewarding when learning other languages, so you can figure out what phonemes map to languages you already know and which are different. I had a bitch of a time figuring out the “a” sound in Hungarian, for example, because of stupid examples like [this](http://www2.ku.edu/~magyar/courses/103/unit1/pronunciation.shtml). ’ "as the vowel in “law” or “car” ’ The fuck? Those are two different vowels to me (and would be probably be interpreted as two different vowels in Hungarian, too – a vs á). Now, a simple IPA notation of /ɒ/ lets me know that I’m dealing with what is an “aw” in my accent, not the “a” in “car.” ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/54 "2016-08-15T03:24:27Z")
OK, I mainly have one thing to add: **Complaining about IPA in threads where people are trying to use it is thread-shitting and should be treated as such.** I’m not saying the mods _aren’t_ doing that, but I do think it bears mentioning. Other than that, I’ll echo what a lot of others have said: IPA is the only minimally acceptable way to transcribe pronunciation. Is it perfect? No. Does it have a few flaws? Sure. It’s still the only minimally acceptable solution to the problem. I even prefer IPA over X-SAMPA and SAMPA, because it isn’t 1995 anymore. We don’t have to avoid “special characters” like we’re sending mail through an ASCII-to-EBCDIC-to-ASCII gateway which will choke on anything which wasn’t on an IBM keypunch in 1964. It’s easier to find reference material on IPA and it’s only marginally more difficult to enter. That said, if someone uses X-SAMPA, I’m certainly going to be happy. Now, if I could find some reason why anyone would spell a /d/ sound as ð I’ll die a happy man, having thoroughly [shaved the largest yak](http://catb.org/jargon/html/Y/yak-shaving.html) in SDMB history… ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/55 "2016-08-15T08:28:35Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > OK, I mainly have one thing to add: **Complaining about IPA in threads where people are trying to use it is thread-shitting and should be treated as such.** I disagree. It’s essentially a foreign language; if I started posting in Malay mid-thread people would rightly get pissed and demand I switch back to English or provide a translation. Like I said before: IPA is gibberish to a lot of people (including me); it’s completely useless for trying to convey sounds in that sense. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/56 "2016-08-15T09:37:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > If you want to be clear and unambiguous about pronunciation, when communicating to others who care about clear and unambiguous pronunciation, there’s really no substitute for using a system designed for that, and IPA is the most widespread and broadly understood such system. > > However, there are also a lot more people who don’t know IPA (including myself), and for such people, IPA provides no understanding at all. > > So the best practice is to simply give the pronunciation twice, once using IPA and once using more familiar phonetics, with the understanding that any ambiguity in the familiar phonetics is resolved by the IPA. This. (Lest I be accused of hypocrisy, I admit that I’ve never made the effort to include an IPA description in an SDMB posting, yet. Maybe next time.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/57 "2016-08-15T11:25:03Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Martini Enfield** : > > I disagree. It’s essentially a foreign language; if I started posting in Malay mid-thread people would rightly get pissed and demand I switch back to English or provide a translation. If you did so for no reason, then of course people would be upset. But if the question is something like “how do you say this in Malay?”, then the only reasonable answer is one posted in Malay. Similarly, it would be jerkish to just start posting in IPA for no good reason. But when there’s a question like “How is ‘Odin’ pronounced in the original Norse?”, the answer must contain some clear way of writing a pronunciation. And most of the ways that ordinary folks think are clear, aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/58 "2016-08-15T13:08:31Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > IPA looks like gibberish to me; I can’t read it. IMHO it might as well be Martian. Don’t be silly. Everyone knows Martians write in GREEN! > [@Chronos](#): > > If you did so for no reason, then of course people would be upset. But if the question is something like “how do you say this in Malay?”, then the only reasonable answer is one posted in Malay. > > Similarly, it would be jerkish to just start posting in IPA for no good reason. But when there’s a question like “How is ‘Odin’ pronounced in the original Norse?”, the answer must contain some clear way of writing a pronunciation. And most of the ways that ordinary folks think are clear, aren’t. Exactamundo! It would be like complaining about the use of integral signs because you’ve never taken calculus when the thread is discussing something that requires math. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/59 "2016-08-15T14:48:58Z")
1. Since the quick reply function on this board does not support IPA, requiring it would compel posters to open an appropriate text program, enter unicode symbols, then copy, paste, close the text editor and continue on with their day. You can do that if you want, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to demand everyone on this board follow it. 2. It doesn’t matter how carefully you explain what the consonant should sound like in “Odin” when people will actually pronounce it Oh-thin, Aw-thin, Uh-thin, Ooh-thin (as in moon), Ooh-thin (as in book) and other variants of “O” that I can’t even describe – because that’s how they naturally pronounce it. ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291/60 "2016-08-15T15:04:53Z")
I don’t know what “doesn’t support IPA” means, but there’s no need to use unicode. As already posted in this thread, there are [websites](http://ipa.typeit.org/full/) that allow one to fairly quickly type in IPA, with buttons for those symbols that don’t appear on a standard keyboard. Type, copy, paste, post. [θɹoʊt wɔblɝ mæŋgɹoʊv] Took me all of about 30 seconds. (I didn’t transcribe that rigorously, in case anyone wants to criticize it.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ipa-in-the-sdmb/762291.md?page=4)