I never said you did. So we agree.
I disagree.
Which are very rare
The benefits are virtually non-existent for most peopleqiote and that FTG’s claims that IPA is “a mess” and useless to anyone who isn’t an expert in linguistics are nonsensical and ignorant.
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I think IPA is more difficult to learn compared to, say, learning pronunciation of pinyin and I think you’re strawmanning fTG’s comments.
Question about the IPA - When I was reading about it, it uses, for example ʌ to represent the sound in cup and luck. But what if I pronounce those words differently? What if I say “coop”? Then won’t I be picking the wrong symbol to use to describe how I pronounce it?
IPA isn’t an alternate alphabet with which to spell words. It’s a way of describing pronunciations. If you pronounce the word differently than somebody else, you would use a different symbol when using IPA to describe how you pronounce the word.
But that’s the thing. If I wanted to show someone how I pronounced ‘cup’ on a message board, I would use the ‘ʌ’ symbol, since ‘cup’ is what is shown as the example. So no matter how I ACTUALLY said ‘cup’, I would use that symbol, since ‘cup’ is the example used for that symbol. Am I getting something wrong?
Yes, I would say what you’re getting wrong is that in order to figure out IPA, you can’t look at examples that define an IPA symbol as how a certain word is pronounced. That is inherently flawed because different accents and dialects pronounce words differently. If you want to figure out how to represent the way you pronounce the word “cup” in IPA, you can’t take the word of a source that says “the symbol for the vowel sound in the word cup is ʌ.” That’s wrong. You need to use a chart that lets you listen to how each IPA symbol is pronounced, and find the one that corresponds with the vowel sound you use. Like this chart:
I have the same issue - unless there is some website I can go to to hear exactly how ʃɜɹ is pronounced, all I know is that some people pronouce “sure” that way - but according to this, there are four different ways to pronounce “sure”
I have no idea which one is the one I use - just that it’s not a homophone for “shore” and it is not the same as the first syllable of “sherbet” in my dialect.
ETA- Arctite addressed my issue to some extent, but I think it only highlights how difficult it would be for an infrequent user
No – the /ʌ/ refers to a specific speech sound. If you don’t use that specific sound in your pronunciation of “cup”, you use another vowel symbol altogether:
/kʌp/ = how 99% of American English speakers say “cup”.
/kup/ = how nearly all American English speakers say “coupe” (rhymes with majority pronunciations of Am. Engl. “loop”, “soup”, etc.).
/kʊp/ = same vowel as in majority pronunciations of Am. English “book”, “stood”, “could”. Maybe some Scottish and Irish English speakers pronounce “cup” this way?
Ah, the listening and choosing part is the part I was missing. I guess some people learning IPA could realize “Damn, I’ve been pronouncing that word wrong my whole life!”
Indiana has a Versailles, too. It also has a LaFontaine, pronounced La fountain. Georgia has Berlin, pronounced [SIZE=“3”]burr[/SIZE]-lin. The story is that it was pronounced as the German city until WWI, when the pronunciation was changed.
Now, on to the onions- according to those who live there, the proper pronunciation of the city in South Georgia and the onion is vie-DAY-uh.
More than four ways, even. My own pronunciation of “sure” is not among those four 
. I’d write my “sure” in broad IPA as /ʃɔɹ/. Rhymes with my “shore”, “four” /fɔɹ/, “bore”, /bɔɹ/, etc.
So … what does IPA /ɔ/ sound like? Listen here. YouTube makes it easy to find listening samples.
…
For the IPA hounds: my /ɔ/ in words ending in /ɹ/ actually is a bit raised and centralized, anticipating the coda. But this is pretty typical.
Not at all. At worst, the IPA student might learn that their own pronunciation of a given word is uncommon among English speakers … but so long as conversational understanding is not compromised, it wouldn’t be a wrong pronunciation.
No, it’s wrong 
Quick: which group is straight-up WRONG?
a) “Don/Dawn” sound the same!
b) “Don/Dawn” sound different!
I encountered an issue with that some years ago. In a phone conversation with a (b) type person, I said a word in my (a) type dialect that led to confusion because the other person heard it as what I would have considered a homophone. Perhaps we of the lazy speech habits are more adept at inferring from context than are those of the refined speech habits.
b is WRONG! Straight-up!
I look forward to hearing about your findings in Melbourne this August. Following upon your resolution of one of the all-time phonetics dilemmas, your lecture will be the can’t-miss event of the conference 
Neither “lazy” nor “refined” has anything to do with it. Just different, equally valid** dialects.
** from a phonetics standpoint – social marking is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish.
My speech is titled “If you don’t pronounce everything the exact way I do, then you are wrong”
I’m sure it will be a big hit!
Dr. Manson. “The Propriety of Manson English (or How David Attenborough and Kelsey Grammer Pretty Much Talk Like The Guys on ‘The Young Ones’ [or Else the ‘Cash You Outside’ Girl])”. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia. August 5, 2019
Except, of course, the unalterable fact that “b” is RIGHT! Straight-up!