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Our "schwa a" is a very flat, somewhat extended ah, verging on aah; you have to momentarily widen your mouth, as if into a smile or grimace, to say it. It's not a posh, round-mouthed aw, nor a dropped-chin doctor's "ahh", not a grunted uh, not a clipped o'h, not a rhotic ar, not eh, not er, nor any other of dozens of other permutations. But here I am, trying to _describe_ it to you; it's almost futile. If I had training in the dictionary sybolism you use, I might succeed, but anyway I'm still not convinced that the sybolism has standardised sound correspondence.
Ah, well, you are entitled to your opinions, of course, as am I, but the IPA has been used for quite some time by linguists and phonologists to represent how folks pronounce words in their languages and dialects, and it does a damned fine job of it. What with your non-IPA transcriptions of various kinds of schwas, I must admit I would have to hear you say them to tell you whether any or all of them are different nuanced pronunciations of a schwa or some other vowels. There are diacritics that can be added to most of the glyphs in the IPA to fine-tune the pronunciations. After that spectrograms can be used if finer gradations are needed.
The IPA is not a mere dictionary symbolism, it is a way to accurately represent the varying sounds of different languages and it does a good job at that. It's better than ad hoc pronunciation guides based on the erratic spelling 'system" of English or any other language. It's not perfect, but somebody who knows some phonology (articulatory and acoustic) and the IPA can give and get a good idea of how words would be pronounced in various languages and dialects.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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For example, if something was defined as: "like the 'ou' in about", Canadians would read this completely differently to the rest of us. South ("Syth") Dubliners would read it differently again.
That's exactly what the IPA can do. The "ou" in Canadian "about" is [ʌw]. In American it's [aw].
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not wanting to appear *too doggedly inflexible, but how is this (use of different symbols in IPA) better than any other system, as long as all the symbology is defined?
(with my old desk dictionary I could look on the bottom of the page and at least get some idea of the pronunciation.. just try that with IPA!)
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how is this (use of different symbols in IPA) better than any other system, as long as all the symbology is defined?
The symbols are defined by place and manner of articulation (i.e., how the sound is produced in the vocal tract). The IPA was designed from the beginning to include sounds that do not occur in English. The sounds are not really defined by reference to English (or any other single language's) sounds. IPA developed out of some other early attempts at devising a phonological transcription system. It was developed by people who spent a lot of time and effort in devising a rational system that could be used to transcribe the sounds of any language that a linguist ran across and felt a need to write down. The system does not have any of the conservative features that most orthographies exhibit when sound and symbol diverge over the course of time.
The idea of defining sounds by place (and to some extent) manner of articulation was not an invention of 19th and 20th century European linguists. Ancient Indian grammarians had come up with a similar phonological system 9with different symbols about 2500 years ago. (Actually the symbols came much later; the first descriptions were oral.)
(with my old desk dictionary I could look on the bottom of the page and at least get some idea of the pronunciation. just try that with IPA!)
Where the older, more ad hoc systems break down, is that they only refer to words in the target language. Not all people, speaking regional dialects have the same pronunciation. For example, there are folks in the States who do not pronounce the h in whether[/i] and some who do not differentiate the vowels in pin and pen. You pretty much have to learn any writing system, and as I have suggested before, the symbols needed to transcribe most varieties of English are around 40 or 50, and most of them look like their non-IPA counterparts. Where the IPA is necessarily complicated is in its rendition of vowels. There are more than five (six) vowels in English. A bunch of sounds traditionally called vowels are actually diphthongs or triphthongs. My major problem with most traditional dictionary pronunciation guides is that they differ from dictionary to dictionary. IPA is a standard.
I suppose I shall never convince you. So be it.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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oh, I understand the need, and I see why a linguist would love it. but it just seems awfully arcane* to us rustics out here in the hinterland.
*as in the runes of the Elder Futhark, e.g. : )
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Pooh-Bah
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I just know that it is better to buy language phrase books locally. Otherwise hints like "pronounced as the u in tube" will not be helpful.
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So then, the IPA seems to cover all the tonal possibilities and regional variations. Thanks for explaining it.
But - back to my original gripe - where does that leave AWAD's "uh-SEV-uh-rayt" and its ilk? Who played god and decided that these sounds were identical "uh"s? And for which region are these pronunciations valid?
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Who played god and decided that these sounds were identical "uh"s? And for which region are these pronunciations valid?
You'd have to ask Mr Garg, and he does not read this board postings. But, my guess is he either adapted it from some dictionary or kind of made it up on his own. The IPA evokes such negative responses from most people, that most popular words folks fall back upon faulty transcriptions methods. and systems.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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>that most popular words folks fall back upon faulty transcriptions methods. and systems.
I take exception to that! I don't have a particular method, much less system; I just got tired of folks complaining about the lack of a pronunciation guide. (but then, I'm not that popular, anyways.)
I've tried using the OED as a guide, but they use that darn IPA notation. I s'pose you could call my method/system ad hoc. : )
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But - back to my original gripe - where does that leave AWAD's "uh-SEV-uh-rayt" and its ilk? Who played god and decided that these sounds were identical "uh"s? And for which region are these pronunciations valid?
this is (at least) the second time around at AWAD for 'asseverate', to wit: Date: Fri Apr 14 00:19:02 EDT 1995
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--asseverate
X-Bonus: Death has been proven to be 99 per cent fatal in laboratory rats.
as.sev.er.ate \*-'sev-*-.ra_-t\ vb : to assert earnestly
-- as.sev.er.a.tion \-.sev-*-'ra_--sh*n\ nso, he was using '*' for schwa? I think his current method is better..
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