IHTLIU!
Okay so that was an adventure similar to looking up one word in the dictionary and then having to look up ten more to understand the definition.
For non-linguists those symbols are undecipherable. After having read several articles on the IPA and rhotic and non-rhotic speech (see, I knew there was a name for that silly add/drop an r thing) this is an example of what I was saying....
As an example, the last name of actor Jake Gyllenhaal, written ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl in the IPA, might be written jil-ən-hôl in a phonemic system and jill-in-hall in a non-phonemic system.
You might be able to pronounce ˈdʒɪlənhɔːl but would a non-linguist even have a clue? Nope.
My linguist skills were retarded at the phonemic system which is what was standard for me growing up. I am not so backwards as to need the non-phonemic system, or at least not quite yet.
but at least now I know what it's called when I don't think about the word 'orange' and say it as 'oinge'.
