User:Bdo1964

in response to:

Where did you encounter the problem? Please add links when possible.

i would not describe this as a problem. but here are my observations and i am looking for some guidance.

i was visiting the url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi

and i came across the following:

pronounced [mo???n?d?a?s? k?r?m?t??nd?? ga?nd??i]

the question marks are all characters that are unrecognizable to my editor of choice, which is SciTE.

so i followed a few links and came across this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English

then i went to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28pronunciation%29

there seems to be some interest among native english speaking people:

   "how do i pronounce this correctly??????"

as an american, i am fully aware, that as an american, i am totally unaware of anything even remotely "International". i still buy gas by the gallon and not by the liter (pardon me litre).

on the other hand, i am a retired mathematician and programmer. so please let me make some comparisons:

say i were amongst any of the following:

   The IPA is used by foreign language students and teachers,
   linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers,
   actors, lexicographers, artificial language enthusiasts
   (conlangers), and translators.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet

i would hazard a guess and say this set comprises less than 1% of native english speaking people who visit en.wikipedia.org.

therefore the rational seems to be:

   The pronunciation of English words in Wikipedia
   is given in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
   using the following transcription, which is not specific
   to any one dialect.

the problem with this is: it is not specific to ANY dialect!

except:

   foreign language students and teachers,
   linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers,
   actors, lexicographers, artificial language enthusiasts
   (conlangers???), and translators.

so here is my comparison...

suppose i WERE one of those folks who actually uses the:

   International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

and i wanted to know what the square-root of two was...

should i first have to learn about the natural numbers, then the set of integers and then the rationals and set notation to prove that the square-root of two is not a rational number and then learn that it is also neither a transcendental or complex number or quaternion?

so here's where the looking for guidance part comes in...

since i am retired... all that information provided to make sense of this international alphabet which has been around since 1888, (but simple american folks like mathematician's have never heard of!) actually looks interesting to me, but that is probably because i LIKE looking at unintelligible symbols! but on the serious side, i have found this to be quite irritating.

so here is my proposed solution:

when a new topic is started, i see: "needs citation" all over the place. now those comments may all be made by other wiki readers who can't keep their fingers off the "needs citation" button. but my solution would require a bit of programming... so here goes...

how about i create a simple database, and every so often the topics which contain the: International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols are matched against this database and we stick a tiny, tiny, little icon near it (so as not to offend) so that when you pass your mouse cursor over it, you actually DO get some help on how to pronounce the word. of course this would only be for the native english speaking wiki's.

if you think this solution might work, let me know, i will be happy to code it, for the sake of all us simple folk who would like to know how to pronounce: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi correctly...

thank you.

sincerely,

brian oslick bdo1964@att.net 08.08.2011 Bdo1964 (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)