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Haha! The IPA is great because it has support for many languages, and is a recommended tool for students learning English in Taiwan. If computer keyboards used

Haha! The IPA is great because it has support for many languages, and is a recommended tool for students learning English in Taiwan. If computer keyboards used IPA instead of ASCII, I think we'd all be using it by now. But typing is pushing everything towards ASCII (not even Latin because of the lack of diacritics on US/UK/ZH-TW keyboards). I made a Pingtype English for language exchange the other way, and that uses IPA instead of Pinyin. I often find that users prefer ㄅㄆㄇㄈ though (which I derive from IPA). https://pingtype.github.io/english.html https://pingtype.github.io/english.html

logicallee 9y ago
>If computer keyboards used IPA instead of ASCII, I think we'd all be using it by now Not at all! English has really strong historical roots for its spelling, but these could be eliminated even without IPA. Spelling could be standardized instead of staying historical. ("Speling kud bee stenderdized insted uv staying historikel".) Even within ASCII. I was pointing out that the parent poster fails to realize that English itself has a "complicated old writing system" with "historical and cultural value". Just as having different characters allows for homophones to be recognized easily, English does the same thing with many words that sound the same (sea/see/C, or to/two/too, etc.) There is a lot of history or culture in English spelling, for example all the silent -e endings.