Benjamin Sonntag-Kingbenjamin@piaille.fr
Oct 9, 2026, 7:37 AM@dancingtreefrog @timtfj
I'm not in that field at all but wasn't the point of having a phonetic alphabet to precisely have different spellings when ... pronounced differently?
Replies
David W. Jonesdancingtreefrog@mastodon.socialOct 9, 2026, 7:57 AM@benjamin @timtfj Understood. I think part of it was to capture "the sounds the speaker actually used" vs "the official sound of the language".
I just think it makes studying individual words more difficult if you have to adjust for how a speaker in one part of the UK (for instance since the UK is jammed full of dialects) from the same word as spoken by someone else in the UK.
Sometimes I think the real purpose was so singers could sing any language without understanding a word they said! 😉