Lloyd Hanson wrote :
<< (...) the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA for short. It is the
most common method of defining language sounds and is used in most of Europe
where it was developed. Consequently, it is more closely connected to the
sounds of the vowels as found in non-english languages. England and the
United States prefer other various forms of pronounciation guides but IPA is
the most common worldwide.>>
I had never realized that IPA could be a "Continental European" thing!
Fortunately, my English dictionaries (Collins, but also Longman when I give
it a look) use IPA as their unique phonetic system. And if you search for
references about IPA on the internet, you will be led to various American
universities. The Summer Institute of Linguistics doesn't seem to be a
European thing either, or is it?
If English or American are more complex to write in IPA, it is because their
vowels are often diphthongs or triphthongs (sp?). A system that would use
only one symbol to describe a complex English or American diphthong would be
unusable in any other language.
<<Examples:
[i] as in feet
[I] as in fit
[e] as in fate
[E] as in let or fête
[ae] as in that (American Version)
[a] as in file>>
Provided that you drop the final [I] in "fate" ([feIt]) and "file" ([faIl])!
BTW, most dictionaries seem to give [let] as the IPA for "let", and not to
use the [E] at all... So that if you find [e] alone (without [I] or [i]
after it) in an English dictionary, it should be understood as: rather open,
but not enough (in the editor's opinion) to use a [E] symbol, which
designates a still more open "e" in French or Italian.
(The "ê" in "fête" is more open than the "e" in "let", indeed.)
But if you find a [e] in a French dictionary, it will be a very closed vowel
(since the [E] sign is used to designate an open one), but still less closed
than a [e:] in a German dictionary.
| Alain Zürcher, Paris, France
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