But how does that account for differences in accent and dialect? Some areas of the UK can be close to unintelligible for me without a few hours of acclimatisation and they are all using english!
Heavy glaswegian can be murder for me. Heavy geordie (newcastle) is a struggle. And that's even when they are using the same words (ignoring differences in vocabulary and idiom that have developed, because that isn't an alphabet issue).
The point of the International Phonetic Alphabet is that you can stumble across any new word you haven't heard before, and be able to pronounce it correctly. If you master the International Phonetic Alphabet and, say, stumble across a Mandarin or Russian word spelled using that alphabet, you'll be able to pronounce it.
The International Phonetic Alphabet has a unique "key" (letter) for every sound that the mouth/tongue/throat can produce basically. (Or at least it tried to, it seems extensions to the IPA have been released to account for other "qualities of speech", like tooth gnashing, lisping, sounds make with a left cleft lip and cleft palate... I'm quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe... right now).
> But how does that account for differences in accent and dialect? Some areas of the UK can be close to unintelligible for me without a few hours of acclimatisation and they are all using english!
Do you mean accent like stressing a vowel or accent like the way people sound when they speak the language?
If the latter, which alphabets allow for expressing that? I'm not familiar with any that do.
throwaway9281: Which means written english will diverge along with the pronunciation. Well, I can't say it isn't happening already...
"Breetish Prime Meenister Theresa May (picturt), unmer pressur ower her haundlin o Brexit, annoonces her intention tae resign."
"Did ye ken... (Frae a collection o Wikipaedia's airticles): ... that the hairst moose (picturt) is aboot half the weight o the hoose moose?!
"In 1642, while still a teenager, he stairted some pioneerin wark on calculatin machines. Efter three years o effort an 50 prototeeps, he biggit 20 finished machines"
above from current https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
vageli: Well, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7G4z5uEQnE for an example and that was not heavy!
This is heavier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_9FHihGD2Y but certainly not the worst I've met. FYI anyway.