Well, I think a respelling key is better than being not able to pronounce it at all. I recognize parts of IPA, but I frequently forget the sound of some charac

Well, I think a respelling key is better than being not able to pronounce it at all. I recognize parts of IPA, but I frequently forget the sound of some characters, and can't reproduce arbitrary IPA with confidence. I think if you haven't learned it properly, and use it regularly, its somewhat impractical. Mandarin is an interesting example. I found Pinyin really intuitive (as an English and German speaker), and once you get used to some quirks (like x vs sh, or q which is more like english "chi" than english "qu", or i and e that sound much more schwa-like than I'd expect), it is fairly easy to pronounce most words (provided the tone marks are indicated. Official signage in China usually omits them for some reason). And I know the difference between transcription and transliteration, that's why I put transcription in scare quotes. What I mean is, lets pretent Irish words are not written in Latin, but in ... Lotin (which looks 100% like Latin but is completely different :-)), and then treat it like Cyrillic. I have less problems reading Russian or Arabic or Greek names, compared to names writen in other Latin-alphabet languages - because most transliteration schemes try to preserve at least some familiarity for west European language speakers (unless it is Klingon, or Wade-Gilles...).