Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Simple pronunciation markup guide (section)

== Oppose ==
*I strongly oppose. [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] is an international standard and I see no reason to develop an alternative to it. Also, there is none so far. The easiest way to put the names down is an "English language" approximation, that is putting the name "[[Warsaw|Warszawa]]" as <nowiki>[</nowiki>vahrshava<nowiki>]</nowiki>. However, this way is both inaccurate and ambiguous. I bet most of English speakers already know how would they pronounce the name. What they want to know is how do locals pronounce it or how the guy pronounced his surname. 

:Also, if the new system is just an approximation - it would be inconsistent. If it is consistent though, one would also have to learn it. If this would be the case, then why not just learn the system used by the rest of the world, from South Africa to Iceland and from Canada to Russia? [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] is the way to go here. [[User:Halibutt|[[User:Halibutt|Halibu]][[User Talk:Halibutt|tt]]]] 23:48, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

*'''Oppose''': A system ''designed for WP'' is the ''worst possible choice'', regardless of its possible systematic merits. We have [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] for exact phonetics, and we have the much simpler subset [[International Phonetic Alphabet for English]]. It is very hard to get a large number of editors use any standard at all, but it would be impossible to enforce a WP-only non-standard! [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] 16:56, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

*'''Oppose'''. I've given my arguments in detail on [[Wikipedia talk:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American)|the talk page]]. In a nutshell: incomplete, intuitivity is subjective, no clear definition for phoneme symbols; IPA is already used by tens of millions of people -- why not use something well-defined and well-known rather than inventing an ad-hoc solution? (On the talk page, [[User:Nohat|Nohat]], [[User:Jallan|Jallan]], and [[User:Jongarrettuk|jguk]] also offer strong arguments in opposition.) [[User:Pnot|Pnot]] 04:58, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

*'''Oppose'''. WP should focus on the written word, supplemented by graphics, and for niche needs like [[Ayn Rand]], [[Richard Wagner]], & [[umlaut]]., make do for now with ad hoc ''common sense'' expedients. (No SAMPA or IPA, thank you. I took enough of an interest in IPA, many decades ago, to internalize some of its distinctions & recognize the name, but have never bothered to keep a reference on it, let alone learn it; if a logophile like me does neither, specialist stds have no place here.) I support the idea of en:WikiPronunciation, a multi-standard, multi-dialect, & potentially audio-serving site that could be linked from WP and Wiktionary, but the resources for doing the pronunciations problem right neither can be afforded out of WP's resources, nor should be limited by the 'Pedia's scope, since the value of doing it right is greater as a free-standing capability. --[[User:Jerzy|Jerzy]][[User talk:Jerzy|(t)]] 18:37, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

*'''Oppose'''. I have articulated my reasoning at length at [[Wikipedia talk:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American)]]. I'm just adding my name to this list where it might count for something if this ever gets anywhere as a policy discussion. More usefully, perhaps a counter-proposal FOR the use of IPA when required as an official or semi-official policy could be started. I don't know how one goes about doing that. [[User:GRAHAMUK|Graham]] 22:10, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

*'''Oppose'''. We are not a standards body. 
: On the other hand, I think in many cases it is important to mention both the correct pronunciation and the recommended English pronunciation (either the best possible approximation allowed by the English sounds or a pronunciation commonly accepted by English speakers). I propose finding some open software that can convert IPA into sounds and adding a new kind of link (just as there are RFC and ISBN links) to link to sounds generated on the run. [[User:Lev|Lev]] 20:42, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

*'''Oppose'''. In those cases where we need to indicate pronunciation it would often be sufficient to say "rhymes with ..." or "accent on the first syllable." If a more exact transcription is needed, use IPA, but in the case of English words maybe allow British and American variants, where they differ. Yes IPA is a bit tedious to type, but each word will be written once and hopefully read many times, so the convenience of the reader is more important. By the way it's currently important to use the IPA template, as otherwise the IPA symbols will not show up correctly on certain most commonly used browsers. I note that a few articles already have a link to a sound file, which might be the obvious long-term solution [[User:Ross Burgess|rossb]] 15:14, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)