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Comment by Merrill | Hacker News Reader

It would be nice if word processors had a feature to translate documents to International Phonetic Alphabet. Your second paragraph would be:

səʊ waɪ dʌznt ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ juːz ðɛm? ɪts klɪə ðə ˈlæŋɡwɪʤ niːdz ðɛm wɪð wɜːdz sʌʧ æz θruː, ˈθʌrə ænd θɔːt wɪʧ ɑː kənˈfjuːzɪŋ ɪˈnʌf fɔː ˈneɪtɪv ˈspiːkəz lɛt əˈləʊn ðəʊz ˈlɜːnɪŋ ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ æz ə ˈsɛkənd ˈlæŋɡwɪʤ. ænd haʊ əˈbaʊt ˌɪnkənˈsɪstᵊnsiz sʌʧ æz ðə vɜːb tuː liːd ænd ðə ˈmɛtᵊl Pb liːd, ɔːr ˈʌðə streɪnʤ 'gh' wɜːdz sʌʧ æz kɒf?

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I think I can speak for many many people who casually read Wikipedia articles by asking: how does one go about practically learning the IPA, so as to be able to read (not even write) something like that? every time I come across a Wikipedia article that uses IPA to explain pronunciation, it's wholly inscrutable gibberish, completely useless if there isn't a listen-to-someone-saying-it button.

Just like you learn anything else. Flash cards, pure repeated exposure, reading about the symbols long enough that you have a framework to fit them into, etc.

Transcription practice really helped me associate IPA with speech sounds.

Usually those pronunciations are also links to the IPA helper page. I've used it to figure out pronunciations in the past.

https://itinerarium.github.io/phoneme-synthesis/

In my case, we learnt it in high school. Our teachers insisted on it being very useful to look up the pronunciation of unknown words, and we even had exams where we had to transcribe from IPA to the standard spelling.

This was in Spain though, were the national language has a very consistent spelling, and English is taught as a second language. I don't know how it is in other countries.

Non-rhotic accent, eh? Estuary English?

"ˈθʌrə"'s was interesting to me, I'd render "thorough" in my ideolect (Southern-inflected General American) "θʌrow". Is your pronunciation "standard" in British English (or whatever the prestige variant where you're from is)?

Also, I think you meant "ðə ˈmɛtᵊl Pb lɛd"

ˈθʌrə is standard in British English. Likewise "borough" is ˈbʌrə in British English and ˈbʌrow in American English. "Edinburgh" is ˈɛdɪnbʌrə / ˈɛdɪmbrə in British English, and Wiktionary says this is the American pronunciation too, but I've definitely heard American say ˈɛdɪnbʌrow.

English has so many accents that spelling would still have to be memorized to be used as a universal writing system.

That doesn't really follow. We manage to understand people speaking English in their own accents well enough, so if people were to just write a phonetic transcript of what they spoke, we should be able to understand that as well. A standardized spelling system probably does make the language a bit easier to read overall, but it isn't a necessity.

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