Editing Phonetic transcription (section)

== Versus orthography ==
The [[pronunciation]] of words in all languages changes over time.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Shariatmadari |first=David |title=Don't Believe a Word |publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-4746-0843-5 |pages=21–40}}</ref> However, their written forms ([[orthography]]) are often not modified to take account of such changes, and do not accurately represent the pronunciation.  Words borrowed from other languages may retain the spelling from the original language, which may have a different system of correspondences between written symbols and speech sounds. Pronunciation can also vary greatly among dialects of a language. Standard orthography in some languages, such as [[English language|English]] and [[Classical Tibetan|Tibetan]], is often irregular and makes it difficult to predict pronunciation from spelling. For example, the words ''bough'', ''tough'', ''cough'', ''though'' and ''through'' do not rhyme in English even though their spellings might suggest otherwise. Other languages, such as [[Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Italian language|Italian]] have a more consistent (but still imperfect) [[orthographic depth|relationship]] between orthography and pronunciation. In contrast, a few languages may claim to have a fully phonemic spelling system (a [[phonemic orthography]]).

For most languages, phonetic transcription makes it possible to show pronunciation with something much nearer to a one-to-one relationship between sound and symbol than is possible with the language's orthography. Phonetic transcription allows one to step outside orthography, examine differences in pronunciation between dialects within a given language and identify changes in pronunciation that may take place over time.

A basic principle of phonetic transcription is that it should apply to all languages, and its symbols should denote the same phonetic properties, whatever the language being transcribed.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Crystal |first=David |title=The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-521-55050-5 |edition=2nd |page=160}}</ref> It follows that a transcription devised for one individual language or group of languages is not a phonetic transcription but an orthography.