What is the reason we don’t use the international phonetic alphabet when writing things?
In: Other
bɪˈkɒz ði aɪ-piː-eɪ ˈæbsəluːtli sʌks tuː ˈækʧuəli raɪt ˈɛniθɪŋ ɪn. ɪts ˈbeɪsɪkᵊli ɪnkɒmprɪˈhɛnsəbᵊl. ɪt ɪz ˈəʊnli ˈrɪəli ˈjuːsfᵊl wɛn ˈstʌdiɪŋ ˈlæŋɡwɪʤ ænd prəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃᵊn.
(translation “Because the IPA absolutely sucks to actually write anything in. Its basically incomprehensible. It is only really useful when studying language and pronunciation.”)
Because nobody would be able to understand it, and nobody would want to write with it?
The thing about the IPA is that it was developed to be universal. It tries to represent all sounds in all languages with as much precision as possible. This is really useful for academic work, but not so much for actual communication, for a variety of reasons:
* No language uses all possible sounds, so every language uses its own alphabet to represent the sounds it does use, which is easier to learn
* Many sounds in many languages are different from each other, but close enough that in practice they can just be represented with the same symbol and it’s fine
* Many words in many languages contain sounds that have either changed over time or are subject to some pronunciation shift that changes how the word is actually pronounced compared to the spelling. IPA would try to transcribe this accurately, but that would just confuse everyone
* People already have keyboards that have a limited number of symbols
Most langauges already have their own writing system that people are used to. It would be a major pain to switch. Some languages from the Coast Salish peoples of the Pacific Northwestern U.S. do use a modified form of the IPA (e.g. Luhshootseed). These languages didn’t have a written form prior to the popularization of the IPA, so the IPA was adopted (with some modifications) https://tulaliplushootseed.com/alphabet/
Because the IPA is wastefully large for any individual language, unnecessarily complex for ordinary usage, and divorced from the social context that languages grow out of, while giving no everyday-usable benefits.
I grew up in denmark, the scandinavian languages have different versions of: æ ø å. Danish have a e i o u y æ ø å, all of those vovels each have min 3 diffeferent ways to pronause it. Its fine for us, its our local laguage, but swedish and norwegan have different versions of those many sounds too. Now yoy want everyone to learn our obscure only-used-here sounds, just like our total unique silent d’s for danish (wich is actualy different and not just one ‘silent’ d and a single normal d). Between danish, swedish and norwegian alone that would easely make up dosins of sounds no one ells uses, but you want to include those for everyone to learn?
Add spanish and french, and zulu with their click sounds, and all the otjer weird stuff. Yoy end up having a written language no one realy can master because there is sooooo many sounds they will never ever use in their lifetime. Thats why we dont use the phonetic alfabet globaly for everyone to learn.
Pronunciations differ, even in the same language. Australians, Americans and the British all speak their own variant of English. (Mostly) uniform spelling avoids issues that phonetic writing experiences.
So much American poetry confused me when I was young because I thought ‘that doesn’t rhyme’. If all I had was the phonetic alphabet, I’d know it would rhyme but would have no idea what the words are.
And I guarantee half of what I say that’s legible English to another Australian would be goddamm indecipherable if all you knew was what was heard without seeing it written.
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